Dame Eileen: ‘First-night nerves are still terrifying’

‘The stage is still the comfort; the fear is on the way to the theatre. Usually, once there, I know I own the place’

DAME Eileen Atkins has appeared on stage since she was a child, but the 87-year-old actress has admitted her opening-night nerves are still so bad that she contemplates jumping “in front of a bus” rather than performing.

Although she has earned Bafta and Olivier awards for her stage work in a professional career spanning more than six decades, the star of Cranford and Gosford Park still finds the first night of a show “torturous” and is terrified on her way to the theatre.

She said: “I do think I am so scared that I think I’d rather be anywhere than what I’m doing now. Anywhere.”

The veteran of the West End has admitted she is usually “very frightened on first nights”, adding: “First-night nerves are terrifying.

“I’ve, many times on the way to the theatre, thought, ‘OK, to calm yourself down: would you rather step in front of this next bus and just die and get it all over with, or are you going to go to the theatre and do this play?’.”

The co-creator of Upstairs Downstairs, who has appeared on stage in works including Honour and The Unexpected Man, said despite her fears the compulsion to act always wins out.

She began to perform when she was six years old after being pushed onto the stage in working men’s clubs during the Second World War, and has said that opening nights are now “the only time” she feels fear in the theatre.

Speaking on the podcast How To Own The Room, Dame Eileen said: “I am extraordinarily at home on the stage …

I’ve never thought, ‘Isn’t it nerve-racking, I’ve got to go on stage’, because I was just bundled up in clothes at night, taken to a working men’s club and shoved onto a platform.

“I’m very frightened on first nights, but that’s the only time I’m ever frightened of the stage. Even then it’s not the stage … the stage is still the comfort; the fear is on the way to the theatre. Usually, once I get through that stage door, I know I own the place.”