THE GUARDIAN – As she stars in this yearâs Christmas feelgood movie, Emilia Clarke talks about the intense scrutiny of Game of Thrones, how she coped with the brain haemorrhage that almost killed her â and why we all need to escape reality sometimes





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Emilia Clarke had a headache. It was 2011, just before Valentineâs Day and just after sheâd wrapped on the first series of Game of Thrones, playing Daenerys Targaryen, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons. She didnât yet know, as she crawled into the locker room of her local gym in north London and vomited bile into the toilet, that Game of Thrones would run for seven further seasons, break Emmy-award records for most wins for a scripted television series and for a drama, be named one of the greatest TV shows of all time, and quickly come to define her. But there was much she didnât know.
She didnât know that at 24 she had suffered a life-threatening stroke, a subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH) caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain. She didnât know, as she lay on the floor repeating lines from Game of Thrones in order to test her memory, that a third of SAH patients die immediately, or that those who survive require urgent treatment to avoid a second, often fatal bleed. She didnât know there was another swollen blood vessel in her brain, which had doubled in size by the time she finished filming season three. She didnât know that one day, eight years later, over biscuits on her pink sofa, she would be smiling with the dark realisation that her stroke was one of the best things that could have happened to her.
Her pink sofa is in her pink house, which is also green and blue and muted shades of rust, and has a secret bar hidden in a courtyard shed, and an outdoor screening room heated by a wood-burning stove. To walk into her living room, where one corner is painted with a symbol relating to her mum, another to her late dad, and a third with a meaningful dragon, is to enter the cosiest corner of Clarkeâs mind. By the stairs, horsehair is visible in the plaster; the walls are stripped back to the bone. She shows me round with a raw sort of glee, a sense that her comfort and safety are bound into the details: the friendsâ art on the walls, the âsingle girlâsâ bedroom. She moved in after Game of Thrones; in this and many ways, her life can be cleanly dissected into before and after.
Before, Clarke, now 33, who grew up in Oxfordshire, had appeared in a single episode of the daytime soap Doctors. She was ambitious, optimistic and relentlessly cheerful. After, after Game of Thrones, and the death of her father, which shook her family, as did her life-threatening stroke, she is sitting on her pink sofa and contemplating a decade that changed her.
âAnd yes, Iâm at the point where I definitely think of the brain haemorrhage as a good thing,â she nods. She has extremely expressive eyebrows that appear jointed â for every word Clarke says, and she says many, they add 15 more. âBecause I was never destined to be the âyoung actor goes off the railsâ type, up and down the gossip columns. And having a brain haemorrhage that coincided precisely with the beginning of my career and the beginning of a show that became something quite meaty, it gave me a perspective that I wouldnât have had otherwise.â She pauses. âIâm quite a resilient human being, so a parent dying and brain haemorrhages coinciding with success and people following you in the street and getting stalkers â youâre just, like, âWell letâs try and make something sensible of it.ââ
It was a decade that contained the very best and very worst of a life, and one of the sensible things she tried to make of it was the founding of a charity, SameYou, to provide treatment for people recovering from brain injuries and stroke. It was only in order to promote the charity that, eight years after her stroke, she finally decided to talk about it, in a piece for the New Yorker. âOn the set, I didnât miss a beat, but I struggled,â she wrote, of returning to Game of Thrones after brain surgery. âSeason two would be my worst. I didnât know what Daenerys was doing. If I am truly being honest, every minute of every day I thought I was going to die.â
Itâs remarkable, considering her profile and her regular appearances in the Daily Mail in lovely dresses and grand smiles, that she managed to keep it secret for so long. She didnât want to tell strangers, âBecause it was mine.â She feared, too, that people would âsneer at itâ.
It so happened that, the week before I went to meet her, I had a similar (though less dramatic) neurological diagnosis â when I tell her about it, for some reason my voice shakes. She is warm and quick with recommendations, and as she continues she says, âWell, you know, then. You know the worries. That people will think your soul, your movement, your voice, who you were,â was damaged. âIt was nerve-racking to share it, to be honest. It always is, when you make yourself vulnerable.â She waited so long to talk about it, because, âI didnât want people to think of me as⊠sick.â
There are still days on set when she will quietly pull aside the makeup person and say, ââI think Iâm having a brain haemorrhage. Iâm not, I promise, but maybe just put me in a cold tent and weâll sit down for a second, and I apologise in advance if I freak you out.â Over the summer I was burning the candle at both ends, and I was with my mate on the plane. And I was like, âDude, I feel really weirdâŠâ But I was fine. Itâs hard not to think the worst. Itâs hard to think youâre overtired, or youâve been on Instagram too long, and to realise these might have the same side-effects as something deadly. But the charity evolves with me. I use it. Hereâs something else that I feel: maybe someone else feels the same way.â
She talks about the summer just gone with a regretful kind of wonder â it was th e summer after the Game of Thrones finale had divided fans, when she was coming to terms with how the âoverwhelmingâ amount of nudity in the first season had affected her. And, after years of âfilling every hiatus with a movie, shit, good or otherwiseâ (she starred opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Genisys, and as Qiâra in Solo: a Star Wars Story) she had decided to take a break. Or, the decision was made for her.
âAfter we did the premiere for the last season, it felt suddenly like I lost all of the bones in my body. And I was in this puddle on the floor going, âMaybe this isnât just the show.â Iâd never wanted to look around and see what we had, because I was convinced it was just going to blow up in our faces. And, well, at the end it kind of did. So I kept my head down. Then, after the premiere, I finally was able to stop, and that was difficult.â She travelled and went âraving with my mates, but that was not fulfilling. So, bloated and exhausted I went away for two weeks with my best girlfriend, [The Good Fight star] Rose Leslie, and it was in this retreat in India that I suddenly got it. This is what stopping feels like. And I was able to finally⊠be kind to myself.â
I have finally moved this site to my new host (Thanks so much to Kaci and Claudia) and so I can update all that I missed. Hopefully, I got everything.




























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PHOTOSHOOTS & OUTTAKES > 2019 > 2019 Vogue (Spain)
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PHOTOSHOOTS & OUTTAKES > 2019 > 2019 Sirius XM Portraits
PHOTOSHOOTS & OUTTAKES > 2019 > 2019 Stellar
PHOTOSHOOTS & OUTTAKES > 2019 > 2019 Wonderland
APPEARANCESÂ >Â 2019 > Sep 12: Promoting “Last Christmas”
APPEARANCESÂ >Â 2019Â > Sep 19: “Last Christmas” Press Conference +12
APPEARANCES > 2019 > Oct 30: “Good Morning America” Appearance
APPEARANCES > 2019 > Nov 6: Promoting “Last Christmas”
APPEARANCES > 2019 > Nov 9: Promoting “Last Christmas”
APPEARANCES > 2019 > Nov 9: “MTV News” Appearance
APPEARANCES > 2019 > Nov 12: Covent Garden Christmas Lights 2019
APPEARANCESÂ >Â 2019Â > Nov 13: BBC The Story So Far
APPEARANCES > 2019 > Nov 14: HFPA And THR Golden Globe Ambassador Party – Press Conference
APPEARANCES > 2019 > Nov 18: Arm Chair Expert
APPEARANCES > 2019 > Nov 23: Dream Force
FILM PRODUCTIONSÂ >Â Last Christmas > Behind The Scenes
FILM PRODUCTIONS > Last Christmas > Promotional Photos
FILM PRODUCTIONS > Last Christmas > Production Stills
MODELING, ADVERTISING, AND PROMOTIONAL WORK > Dolce & Gabbana ‘The One’ Fragrance – 2018 Campaign > Promotional Photos
MODELING, ADVERTISING, AND PROMOTIONAL WORKÂ >Â Same You (Emilia’s Charity) – 2019Â >Â Photoshoot
MAGAZINESÂ >Â 2019 > 2019 Wonderland – Dec
MAGAZINESÂ >Â 2019 > 2019 Total Film – Dec
MAGAZINESÂ >Â 2019 > 2019 Stellar – Oct 20













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- PHOTOSHOOTS & OUTTAKES > Photoshoots & Outtakes: Screencaps > “Game of Thrones” Season 8 Premiere Photoshoot – 2019
Emilia Clarke and Regina Hall spent the TV season playing characters who break through the boysâ club. Clarke, on HBOâs âGame of Thrones,â was Daenerys, the dragon queen whose will to power has brought her on an eight-season journey to the heart of the action in Westeros. Hall, a TV veteran, infiltrates a different center of power on Showtimeâs comedy âBlack Monday,â as the lone woman in a 1980s Wall Street firm.






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Just when all my childhood dreams seemed to have come true, I nearly lost my mind and then my life. Iâve never told this story publicly, but now itâs time.
It was the beginning of 2011. I had just finished filming the first season of âGame of Thrones,â a new HBO series based on George R. R. Martinâs âA Song of Ice and Fireâ novels. With almost no professional experience behind me, Iâd been given the role of Daenerys Targaryen, also known as Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Lady of Dragonstone, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons. As a young princess, Daenerys is sold in marriage to a musclebound Dothraki warlord named Khal Drogo. Itâs a long storyâeight seasons longâbut suffice to say that she grows in stature and in strength. She becomes a figure of power and self-possession. Before long, young girls would dress in platinum wigs and flowing robes to be Daenerys Targaryen for Halloween.
The showâs creators, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, have said that my character is a blend of Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and Lawrence of Arabia. And yet, in the weeks after we finished shooting the first season, despite all the looming excitement of a publicity campaign and the series premiĂšre, I hardly felt like a conquering spirit. I was terrified. Terrified of the attention, terrified of a business I barely understood, terrified of trying to make good on the faith that the creators of âThronesâ had put in me. I felt, in every way, exposed. In the very first episode, I appeared naked, and, from that first press junket onward, I always got the same question: some variation of âYou play such a strong woman, and yet you take off your clothes. Why?â In my head, Iâd respond, âHow many men do I need to kill to prove myself?â
To relieve the stress, I worked out with a trainer. I was a television actor now, after all, and that is what television actors do. We work out. On the morning of February 11, 2011, I was getting dressed in the locker room of a gym in Crouch End, North London, when I started to feel a bad headache coming on. I was so fatigued that I could barely put on my sneakers. When I started my workout, I had to force myself through the first few exercises.