Emilia Clarke's health battle, love life and explosive Game of Thrones rows
Emilia Clarke has been named in the King’s New Years Honours List - being appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to People with Brain Injuries.
The 37-year-old actress launched a charity called SameYou after surviving two life-threatening brain aneurisms when she was in her 20s. The TV and film star was in the middle of filming her breakout role as Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones - and was left fearing her career could be ruined as she struggled to speak after life-saving surgery.
Emilia’s charity aims to help others who have battled brain injuries and serves to help them connect with the person they were before the injury. She was awarded an MBE for her charity work - which she has campaigned for since her charity was founded in 2016.
In 2019, Emilia shared her aneurism battle with the New Yorker. Recalling the moment she suffered her first health injury while training at the gym, Emilia wrote: “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.
Emilia Clarke has been appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (WWD via Getty Images)
The actress famously played Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones (HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.)“Then my trainer had me get into the plank position, and I immediately felt as though an elastic band were squeezing my brain. I tried to ignore the pain and push through it, but I just couldn’t. I told my trainer I had to take a break. Somehow, almost crawling, I made it to the locker room. I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill. Meanwhile, the pain—shooting, stabbing, constricting pain—was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged.”
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While battling pain, Emilia forced herself to remain conscious and moving, focusing to move her fingers and toes and reciting lines from Game of Thrones to herself. A member of the public came to her aid, and moved her into the recovery position, at which point she has unclear memories of being in an ambulance and being rushed to hospital.
She then recalled: “I was sent for an MRI, a brain scan. The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain. I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture. As I later learned, about a third of SAH patients die immediately or soon thereafter. For the patients who do survive, urgent treatment is required to seal off the aneurysm, as there is a very high risk of a second, often fatal bleed. If I was to live and avoid terrible deficits, I would have to have urgent surgery.”
Emilia recalled being anxious about going under the knife when she was due to press on with filming new episodes of Game of Thrones. She was alarmed when, after three hours of surgery, she came round and couldn’t recite her own name - sparking fear her career could be over.
Doctors had discovered a seance, smaller aneurysm, that she was warned could rupture at any time. She worked through seasons two and three of the hit HBO show but then a brain scan showed that the condition had worsened and she had to undergo surgery again.
She then launched her charity, SameYou, as she hoped focusing on work would keep her mind off her brush with death. The charity raises money to fund new research and therapies to help those who have suffered brain injuries.
The charity website states: “We are a small charity with a uniquely different approach. We influence and strengthen advocacy. By listening to our survivors and reflecting on lived experience, we look for real solutions to remedy the inconsistent mental health care across the world - and help to deliver them.”
Emilia is still best known for playing platinum blonde tyrant Daenerys in Game of Thrones - and it seems she had a difficult time filming scenes for the show. The hit series became famous for its explicit sex scenes and fantasy elements that included ice zombies and dragon.
As a Princess in the show, Daenerys became owner of three ferocious dragons which she used to help her build huge armies and attempt to conquer the world. However, she was also involved in many sex scenes which saw the actress forced to strip naked.
Looking back on her time on the show, Emilia admits she may have been slightly naive in terms of the nude scenes she had to endure. She told Sky News in 2019: "I took the job and then they sent me the scripts and I was reading them and it was like, 'Oh, there's the catch!’”
She clashed with show bosses, explaining: "I've had fights on set before where I'm like, 'no, the sheet stays up', and they're like, 'you don't wanna disappoint your Game Of Thrones fans'. And I'm like, 'f*** you.'"
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Since her time on the show, Emilia has landed roles in blockbuster films including Terminator Genisys and Solo: A Star Wars Story, and recently joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe by playing G'iah in the Marvel TV show Secret Invasion - a role she is expected to reprise in future films.
Emilia has also drawn attention for her personal life away from acting. The actress, who is reportedly single at present, has been romantically linked to a number of high profile men in the past, including comedian Seth McFarlane, Australian action star Jai Courtney, and actor and director Charlie McDowell.
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