Game of Thrones actor Emilia Clarke has spoken openly about the ‘shame’ she felt after surviving two brain aneurysms.
Clarke, best known for playing Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO series, experienced two life-threatening aneurysms. The first occurred in 2011 shortly after finishing the show’s debut season, and the second followed in 2013 after season three had been filmed.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes explains that a brain aneurysm is:
‘a weak spot on an artery in the brain that balloons and fills with blood,’
This can place pressure on brain tissue and nearby nerves, and if it ruptures it may lead to a hemorrhage.
Having discussed her health in the past, Clarke has now shared more on Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, including how she felt she had effectively ‘cheated death’.
The 39-year-old said that just a month after her first surgery in 2011, she was already back out doing promotional work for the first season of the fantasy series.
“I was so ashamed that this thing had happened,” she candidly revealed.
“And that the people who employed me might see me as weak, or see me as something that could be broken.
Clarke, who was 24 during the first season of GOT, said the intensity of her early career meant she pushed aside the potential impact of the injury.
“I was so young and it was so all-consuming that any repercussions of the injury I just absolutely ignored.”
She also told Day she tried to act as though nothing had happened so she could keep working, explaining that only two showrunners were told about her medical emergency — and that they were supportive throughout.
Later in the conversation, Clarke returned to the aftermath of the second aneurysm in 2013, saying it deepened her sense that she had narrowly escaped death.
She became emotional as she described how recovery didn’t bring relief, but instead left her focused on the idea that she shouldn’t have survived.
“‘I’m not to be here, this is going to come and get me,’”
Clarke went on to say she wasn’t sure how she would have coped without her work during that period.
She also recalled a frightening moment six weeks after an operation, when a headache struck while she was doing a live MTV interview at San Diago Comic-Con — and, with her history, she feared the worst.
“In my head I thought, ‘I’ll do it on live TV,’” she said.
The actor has previously shared that she was left missing “quite a bit” of her brain following the health crises.
And in 2022, she told BBC’s Sunday Morning that it was “remarkable” she could still speak and continue living normally without lasting complications.