Emilia Clarke has revealed how she feared Game Of Thrones bosses would fire her from the smash hit HBO series after she suffered two brain haemorrhages.
The actress, 37, who played the now iconic Daenerys Targaryen, suffered bleeds on her brain in 2011 and 2013 which she said left her ‘altered on a dramatic level’.
Emilia first had a haemorrhage just after the first series of Game Of Thrones had finished filming, and she lost her ability to speak as she almost slipped into a coma.
Her second left her in need of surgery after scans showed it had doubled in size, and Emilia has previously told how she was in the ‘really small minority’ of people who have survived and been left with ‘no repercussions’.
She told Big Issue: ‘When you have a brain injury, it alters your sense of self on such a dramatic level, all of the insecurities you have going into the workplace quadruple overnight’.
Emilia Clarke, 37, has revealed how she feared Game Of Thrones bosses would fire her from the smash hit HBO series after she suffered two brain haemorrhages
The actress, who played the now iconic Daenerys Targaryen (pictured) suffered bleeds on her brain in 2011 and 2013 which she said left her ‘altered on a dramatic level’.
Emilia first had a haemorrhage just after the first series of Game Of Thrones had finished filming, and she lost her ability to speak as she almost slipped into a coma
‘The first fear we all had was, ‘Oh my God, am I going to get fired? Am I going to get fired because they think I’m not capable of completing the job?’.
In February Emilia and her mother Jenny were both awarded MBEs for their work establishing a brain injury charity.
The pair both founded SameYou after the actress was shocked to find out how understaffed rehabilitation services were, following her own illness.
Emilia suffered the subarachnoid haemorrhage after an aneurysm – a weak area in a blood vessel – on the surface of her brain burst.
They are most common in people aged between 45 and 70 and can leave patients with extreme tiredness, problems sleeping, headaches, vision disturbances and loss of movement, but Emilia previously said she has been left unaffected,
Emilia has discussed having surgery to restore blood flow, as well as medication to relieve the pain.
Her life-saving treatment has left her with titanium in place of sections of her skull and scarring.
The star has previously admitting she was ‘more afraid of being fired than dying’.
Her second left her in need of surgery after scans showed it had doubled in size , and Emilia has previously told how she was in the ‘really small minority’ of people who have survived and been left with ‘no repercussions’
She said: When you have a brain injury, it alters your sense of self on such a dramatic level, all of the insecurities you have going into the workplace quadruple overnight’ (pictured with GOT co-star Kit Harington)
In February Emilia and her mother Jenny were both awarded MBEs for their work establishing a brain injury charity
She told Harper’s Bazaar: ‘I wasn’t afraid of dying. I was afraid of being fired! I decided: ”This is not something that’s going to define me”. I never gave into any feeling of ‘Why me? This sucks’. I was just like – gotta get back on it.
‘If I’m being brutally honest, the whole thing made me feel very ashamed. Like I was broken. As though the producers must think I’m an unreliable person that they’ve hired.
‘If I hadn’t had a brain haemorrhage, I might have turned into a right old d**khead, thinking I was the bee’s knees, living in Hollywood. I’m so much more aware of what’s happening, in the moment that it’s happening.
‘I don’t worry about failure – I thrive on failure! If something goes wrong, I always think you can fix it. It hurts, it’s scary, but then you can do anything.’
In July 2022, Emilia explained how she should not be able to speak after two aneurysms left sections of her brain ‘no longer usable’.
She told Sophie Raworth on BBC1’s Sunday Morning: ‘You gain a lot of perspective. The amount of my brain that is no longer usable… There’s quite a bit missing which always makes me laugh.’
Emilia said it was ‘life-enhancing and magical’ to see her mother, who has also had surgery to remove a brain aneurysm, recognised for her charity work alongside her.
She said: ‘It’s such an incredible honour, such an incredible privilege, and the most important thing for us is that it’s for everybody with brain injury.
‘To have this near-death experience and to have gone through the sort of the darkness of it all, and then come out of it, we’re so lucky.’
Other people who will be recognised at the investiture ceremony include Labour MP Dame Siobhain McDonagh, for political and public service; director Betsy Gregory, for services to dance; and Lydia Otter, for services to people with autism and their families in Oxfordshire.
