Calm down, Olivia Colman – Daniel Day-Lewis suffered from stage fright too

How much should we worry about and outpour sympathy for Olivia Colman, who has just ’fessed up via a new National Theatre online platform series (Life in Stages, with NT boss Rufus Norris) that she suffers from mounting stage fright? In candid remarks, mid-way in, she revealed that she has a kind of crippling status anxiety – that she will fluff and/or fail to live up to people’s expectations, and that this is becoming a big issue.

“I worry as I’m getting older and slightly more recognisable… the fear [is] that all of these people will watch when you f___ it up and [go] 'Ahh, she did it wrong' or '[We] went to see that person we’ve seen on the telly, she wasn’t that good on stage'. I think I’ve built it up.”

Having been on stage at the NT relatively recently (in 2017’s Mosquitoes) and assuredly successfully (as Norris pointed out), she wasn’t giving notice that her live performing days are over. Even so, the revelation about her visiting a hypnotherapist to try and gather some tools “to stop being so petrified” sounds a minor alarm-bell that perhaps she will err on the side of self-protection and steer clear.

Vividly, she described the unhappy internal monologue that erupts just as the lights go down: “I f___ing hate this job, I hate myself, I’m going to vomit, I’m going to wee”. (Oh, and didn’t she then deliver the mother of all anecdotes, a propos a giggling fit on tour with David Mitchell, about bladder control, and lack thereof.)

Colman radiated a delighted smile in recalling the moment that the necessary confidence arrives in the nick of time, just as she steps out in front of an audience – “and then it comes out!” To which, an honest unbothered layman’s response might be: “So you did your job then? Get a grip!"

There’s a perennial danger whenever a famous face talks about “The Difficulty of Being an Actor” that they will actually intensify the critical gaze they’re worrying about in those moments of self-doubt. Every barrister stepping into a courtroom, every teacher in front of a classroom, every sportsperson undergoing a trial, and closer to home, in a more gladiatorial context, every comic stepping before a drunken crowd, will experience nerves.

You can argue that this natural response is the crucial one – the adrenalin rush required for a person to step, courageously, into a group setting, and under the spotlight.

Having played the Queen in The Crown, Colman must know better than any about how status goes hand in hand with scrutiny, and how there’s nothing for it but to acquire the necessary coping mechanisms. Of course the pressure can get too much, the surge of necessary anxiety to meet the challenges can swiftly become self-inhibiting, but what was instructive about Colman’s remarks was how self-generated much of the imagined criticism and thereby threat-level was.

As a rule, theatre audiences are doting, appreciative, forgiving creatures – who in fact like nothing better than a botched line or minor mishap to take home as a mental souvenir. If the play is terrible the actors can get off the hook, if the actor is terrible, the audience may well notice but further wonder why they were cast (all roads lead back to the director).

In a way, Colman’s remarks, and our instinctive interest in them, highlight the undying paradox that the issue of stage-fright corresponds to the sensitivity of the actor – the rarer their capabilities, the more common their chance of being rattled.

It’s not a total rule of thumb that only great actors are afflicted by stage fright (Stephen Fry, stricken to the point of quitting Cell Mates in the West End in 1995, after a handful of shows, is, let’s say, no Laurence Olivier). And it’s not to argue that those leading players who’ve never experienced what Olivier dubbed “the actor’s nightmare” somehow automatically qualify for demotion. Still, you can’t cast a spell without having a deep, tappable sense of vulnerability and fragility as well as strength.

Last summer, Alison Steadman said she didn’t think she would be doing theatre again on account of her stage fright. She gave some of her best performances in the theatre and it was her brittleness, the sense that you could fathom her insecurities, for all her outward assurance, that made her best-known performance, as uptight suburban hostess Beverly in Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party, so cherishable.

Further back in time, John Gielgud was assailed by the condition at his debut Shakespeare performance, as Romeo at the age of 20. “What if I slipped out into the street and disappeared?” he thought, prior to his first entrance. The consummate “stage animal” of his generation, Olivier suffered far longer; it struck while he was performing Othello in 1964 and loitered for years.

Derek Jacobi fell victim years later playing Hamlet, just as he was delivering “To be or not to be” for the umpteenth time, and he steered clear for a while. The late Ian Holm was absent for almost 15 years after hitting “some kind of buffer” in the role of Hickey in The Iceman Cometh.

Among actresses, Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins and Helen Mirren have been open about facing this demon. And demons there really sometimes are. Daniel Day-Lewis suffered a tearful breakdown – again mid-performance in Hamlet – at the National in 1989, walking off-stage never to return, too much afflicted with thoughts of his father.

There is always, sadly, the exit strategy: just stop. Many realise they’d be forgiven. In his recent book of Theatrical Anecdotes, Giles Brandreth records Ian Ogilvy stumbling off-stage after drying on his first line during a regional tour to Brighton. A doctor said: “Maybe you’ll bever feel like you want to go back. And that’s all right.”

As Ogilvy remembered (in his 2016 memoir): “It was the young doctor’s permission that clinched it for me. Not having to go back. That was exactly how I felt – and how I’ve continued to feel ever since.” Let’s hope Colman can rally for a while longer.