Emilia Clarke Opens Up About Brain Aneurysm Battle

has opened up on her feelings of shame and that she was 'not meant to be here' after suffering two brain aneurysms in her 20s.

The actress, 39, nearly died twice from the potentially fatal condition, with the first haemorrhage happening right after she shot to global fame in the first season of .

However, the star - who played Daenerys Targaryen in the hit fantasy series - revealed she 'did not take care of myself at all', keeping her health issues a secret from and returning to work to do promo for the show barely a month later.

Following her second brain haemorrhage, Emilia said she 'shut down emotionally' and lived in constant fear that death would catch up to her.

Laying bare her health condition and its aftereffects to Elizabeth Day on her How To Fail podcast, the Me Before You star recalled the moment she suffered her first aneurysm aged 24, whilst doing a plank at the gym in 2011.

'The night before I'd had this horrible headache and I just felt restless and anxious and stressed,' she explained. 'I remember it really clearly being like I don't feel good in my brain and body. Didn't think anything of it because I got headaches quite a lot.'

'And then I arrived at the gym and like we've all had those days where you're at the gym going, "I'd rather be anywhere else, this is really hard". And it felt particularly difficult but I was in a mode of beating myself up so you're like "Come on we're doing this we're going to do it".'

Emilia went on: 'So, I arrived incredibly tired and we were doing the plank and then the closest thing to describe it to imagine an elastic band just snapping around your brain, this insane pressure.

'And I stopped and he was like, "Where does it hurt?" And I said, "My head." And my trainer was like, "That's not good".'

Describing how she was throwing up while in intense agony, she recalled the moment she realised that something was seriously wrong and explained how she recited lines from Game Of Thrones to try and block out the pain.

'And then everything feels like a blur. I crawled to the loo and was just vomiting profusely with this unbearable headache', she said.

'And in that moment, I knew I was being brain damaged. Something clicked, someone somewhere had said, "If you're throwing up and you have a headache, that's bad. That's really bad."

'So, I started wiggling my fingers and toes and I started going through all the lines from the show and I just kept saying to myself, "I'm an actor." Because I'd just got my dream job. So, I just kept saying this kind of mantra over and over and over and over again.'

Emilia said she was drifting in and out of consciousness when luckily someone found her and called for an ambulance, while another person managed to call her mum.

But she said that when her parents arrived at the hospital they initially walked past her in the hallway, after not to recognising her while she was in 'excruciating amounts of pain'.

The Emmy nominated star said that at first the doctors had no clue what was wrong, believing her to be on drugs, until a nurse who was married to a brain surgeon recognised the symptoms.