Juliet Stevenson: 'Daredevil sports helped me overcome stage fright'

Juliet Stevenson says she overcame years of stage fright by taking up daredevil sports — and strapped herself to a biplane for her role as a wing-walker.

The Olivier award-winning actress, 60, plays Emily, an aviator who has been struck down by a stroke, in Wings at the Young Vic.

She told the Standard: “I only had stage fright once but it was quite a sustained period, for about two to three years. It was really frightening because it’s like a disease, once it gets into your brain it’s like something in your bloodstream.

“You can’t get it out rationally, there’s no drug for it, it’s like voices in your head saying, ‘You’re going to mess up, you’re going to forget your lines’.”

Stevenson’s fear was so overwhelming that she considered turning down the role of Winnie in Happy Days at the same theatre in 2014. But she said she trained herself to use the fear that sports such as skiing and paragliding gave her as a way to beat the stage fright. She said: “I thought if I can learn to cope with fear physically, which is much more tangible, if I can train myself to deal with fear physically, then maybe I will build up some psychological tools for dealing with psychological fear.” As a result, she no longer suffers from stage fright and is now “an adrenaline junkie who loves anything with speed”.

Describing why she tried wing-walking, she said: “I was scared but I had to understand that intoxication Emily feels when she’s up there outside the plane, although I wasn’t as near as brave.

“Being strapped to a seat on the outside of that plane was one of the high moments of my life. I was in ecstasy.”

“When you get to my age you really have to keep testing yourself because when you get older you can settle into comfort zones — I’m really scared of comfort zones. Once you’re in a comfort zone you’re not trying anything, you’re not stretched and you’re not challenging yourself and then you become boring as an actor.”