‘I’ve got stage fright’: Olivier Award-winning Alison Steadman, 73, vows to ‘stop doing theatre’… and admits she’s ‘sad’ that nerves have closed curtains on her days of treading the boards
- Speaking to Radio Times, she said: ‘I’ve got a bit of stage fright now. I don’t think I’m going to be doing theatre again. Initially, it made me very sad but now I think’
- Alison, famed for her roles in Gavin And Stacey, Abigail’s Party and Nuts In May, has also enjoyed a dazzling career on-stage
- She won an Olivier Award for The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice in 1993
Olivier Award-winning Alison Steadman has revealed she will no longer act in the theatre due to her struggle with stage fright.
The Gavin And Stacey star, 73, candidly admitted she is planning to close the curtains on her stage career due to her difficulties with nerves.
Speaking to Radio Times, she said: ‘I’ve got a bit of stage fright now. I don’t think I’m going to be doing theatre again. Initially, it made me very sad but now I think: “OK, accept it. You can do telly. You can do radio”‘.
Way back when: Alison Steadman has revealed she will no longer act in the theatre due to her struggle with stage fright (pictured playing Connie Craven in Alan Bennett’s play Enjoy, directed by Christopher Luscombe)
Alison, famed for her roles in Gavin And Stacey, Abigail’s Party and Nuts In May, has also enjoyed a dazzling career on-stage and won an Olivier Award for The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice at the National Theatre in 1993.
Speaking to the magazine, she confessed to struggling with her affliction and had henceforth vowed not to take to the stage again.
Alison admitted: ‘I’m at my happiest when I’m in the studio with all the actors’.
Her latest chat comes after Alison revealed she never watches herself on TV because she thinks she looks ‘old and fat’ – but has watched Gavin & Stacey.
Honest: The Gavin And Stacey star, 73, candidly admitted she is planning to close the curtains on her stage career due to her difficulties with nerves (pictured in February 2020)
Alison said: ‘I watched the Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special, which I don’t normally do. Anything I’m in I don’t watch because I think I look old and fat. But with that I loved it so much that I had to watch it again.’
The Gavin And Stacey Christmas Special was well received by fans and was watched by more than 18million viewers. It saw Alison reunite with fellow co-stars James Corden, Ruth Jones, Matthew Horne, Joanna Page and Larry Lamb.
It comes after Alison admitted she never expected a Gavin and Stacey reunion to take place. Speaking to Platinum, she told how she was thrilled when writers James and Ruth decided to make the special last year, nine years after the series ended.
Character: The actress has had a career on the small screen for decades but prefers to avoid her own performances, apart from her role as Pam in Gavin & Stacey
She said: ‘I could have honestly and truly staked my life on the presumption that we’d never do any more episodes. I mean, James has all of this fame in LA and Ruth is busy writing novels and travelling to all kinds of places. What a treat it was.
‘There were about 20 people at the first read-through and we were all hugging and crying — it was like a family reunion, everyone in the same place after 10 years.’
Alison revealed she watched the episode when it first aired on Christmas Day.
She said:’It’s like when you buy a new swimsuit before going on holiday and then you see the pictures when you come home and think, ‘Why on earth did I think that looked nice when I bought that?”