FAR OUT MAGAZINE It doesn’t feel like that long ago that Emilia Clarke was an unknown name in Hollywood, with the actor only taking her first steps in the industry in 2009. Even then, her roles were minor, with it taking another two years for her profile to reach a global audience thanks to the release of HBO’s fantasy behemoth Game of Thrones, which catapulted the newcomer to international acclaim.

Clarke certainly wasn’t alone in her sudden rise to stardom, as Kit Harington, Sophie Turner, and Maisie Williams were just three actors who found great success off the back of the HBO show. Unlike Williams and Turner, Clarke was a little older when she arrived in Game of Thrones’ Westeros, making her transition into other Hollywood roles that much quicker.

All while she was still working on the series, Clarke also found the time to appear alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Genisys, as well as Solo: A Star Wars Story, two films that fired her into a pair of Hollywood’s most beloved franchises. Though both films failed to catch the imagination of fans, there was no doubt that they placed Clarke in a newfound position of prosperity.

Yet, not everything during this period of time was so successful for Clarke, with the actor bravely taking to Broadway in 2013 only for things to go badly wrong. If taking to the stage is a risk in itself, playing an iconic character is even braver, with Clarke adopting the character of Holly Golightly in a stage adaptation of the 1961 Blake Edwards movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s, starring Audrey Hepburn.

Slated by critics, Clarke admitted to the BBC that her time in the role was a “catastrophic failure” before explaining, “It was just not ready. Was I ready? No, I was definitely not ready. I was a baby. I was so young and so inexperienced”.

Despite being 27 years of age when she appeared on stage, Clarke had only taken a small handful of professional roles before she was in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, with Dom Hemingway being her only major feature film and Game of Thrones her only significant TV credit. Indeed, without the necessary experience and with the added pressure after becoming a household name, it’s no wonder that Clarke flopped.

Ever since Game of Thrones came to an end in 2019, Clarke has failed to find proper consistency, only finding small slices of success in Marvel’s Secret Invasion mini-series and the charming festive flick Last Christmas.