Celebrity4 min(s) read
Published 11:45 15 May 2026 GMT
Emilia Clarke has opened up about the first warning sign of her brain hemorrhage that nearly killed her.
The Game of Thrones actress, 39, reflected on surviving two life-threatening brain aneurysms during a recent appearance on the How To Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast.
"I was just convinced that I had cheated death and I was meant to die," Clarke said.
"Every day, that's all I could think about."
Clarke revealed that the first warning sign came shortly after finishing season one of the HBO series, when she suddenly collapsed during a workout at a gym in London.
"The closest thing to describe it is imagine an elastic band just snapping around your brain," she said.
"This insane pressure."
The actress explained that she crawled to the bathroom and began vomiting before realizing the situation was far more serious than exhaustion or stress.
"In that moment, I knew I was being brain-damaged," Clarke recalled.
At the time, the 39-year-old said she was overwhelmed by the sudden pressure of becoming famous after landing the role of Daenerys Targaryen.
While waiting for help to arrive, she remembered desperately repeating to herself that she was 'an actor' because she feared losing the career she had only just begun.
Clarke also said doctors initially struggled to understand what was happening and reportedly suspected drugs could be involved because of her age.
She was eventually transferred to a specialist hospital after a nurse recommended a brain scan.
The Me Before You star admitted that one of her biggest fears after the hemorrhage was that HBO executives and the GOT creators would view her differently.
"I was so ashamed that this thing had happened and that the people who had employed me might see me as weak or see me as something that could be broken," she explained.
She said she only informed showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss about what had happened and otherwise kept the medical emergency private.
"I just didn't want anyone to know," Clarke added.
Despite the trauma, she continued filming and later admitted that work became her emotional lifeline.
"Without my work, I don't know what I would have done," she said.
Clarke later suffered a second aneurysm while living in New York and performing in a Broadway play.
Doctors had been monitoring another aneurysm after spotting it during treatment for the first hemorrhage, but surgery to repair it reportedly went wrong and required emergency brain surgery.
"My parents were waiting for me, and the doctors would come down every half an hour and say, 'We think she's going to die,'" Clarke recalled.
After the second hemorrhage, the Ponies star said she emotionally 'shut down' in ways she had not after the first, and shared that the experience left her hypersensitive and disconnected from the world around her.
"When you have a brain injury, you move around in the world differently," Clarke said.
"You become very sensitive."
The actress confessed that she became consumed by fear whenever she later experienced headaches, worrying that another hemorrhage was happening.
In a separate interview with the BBC, Clarke revealed that scans show 'quite a bit' of her brain is no longer usable following the hemorrhages.
"The amount of my brain that is no longer usable - it’s remarkable that I am able to speak, sometimes articulately, and live my life completely normally with absolutely no repercussions," she said.
Clarke explained that the damage occurred when the blood supply to parts of the brain was interrupted.
"As soon as any part of your brain doesn’t get blood for a second, it’s gone," she explained.
"The blood finds a different route to get around, but whatever bit it’s missing is therefore gone."
Despite the damage, the actress said she considers herself incredibly lucky, and described herself as part of the 'really, really small minority of people that can survive that'.
Over the years, Clarke has become increasingly vocal about her recovery and now advocates for survivors of brain injuries and strokes through the charity SameYou, which she founded with her mother, Jennifer, in 2019.
"One of the biggest things I felt with a brain injury was profoundly alone," Clarke previously told the Big Issue in 2024.
"That is what we’re trying to overcome."
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