'Game of Thrones' star Emilia Clarke reveals how playing Daenerys has changed how she thinks

A lot of actors have to go through different kinds of changes in order to play certain characters right. Christian Bale has inflated and deflated his body shape an impressive number of times for various roles, and Margot Robbie's been pretty unrecognisable in a few of her latest gigs too. But what about more than looks? Can a character change an actor personality-wise too? According to Emilia Clarke, who's played Game of Thrones' Daenerys Targaryen for seven years now, it can. She recently told The Telegraph in an interview that after playing the mother of dragons for so long, her own inner queen has come out and she's started to see the world with fresh eyes. In particular, she attributes her appreciation for the importance of female empowerment to Khaleesi and says the role helped her embrace feminism.

"It's given me a real insight into what it feels like to be a woman who stands up to inequality and hate," she told The Telegraph.

"And as [Daenerys] has become more empowered as a woman, you can't hide any more. You are adding to the voices that are going to make people realize an equal society is what we're aiming for."

Clarke also described her childhood home as a place where women held the positions of power, especially since her mother earned the primary source of income in the household. She said powerful female figures were nothing out of the ordinary for her growing up.

"That's the lens through which I've been fortunate enough to view the world," she explained. "It's only when you go to school that you're like, 'Oh, that's different, that's weird.'"

In a previous interview, the 31-year-old told Entertainment Weekly that it "pains" her when she hears people talk about the show as if it wasn't doing its bit in terms of commentary on gender equality. "There are women depicted as sexual tools, women who have zero rights, women who are queens but only to a man, and then there are women who are literally unstoppable and as powerful as you can possibly imagine," she said. "So it pains me to hear people taking Thrones out of context with anti-feminist spin – because you can’t do that about this show." "It shows the range that happens to women, and ultimately shows women are not only equal, but have a lot of strength." She also recently revealed that she is getting fed up with everyone talking about the nudity and sometimes very explicit sex scenes on the show, which is just one thing that makes the show so controversial. "I'm starting to get really annoyed about this stuff now because people say, ‘Oh, yeah, all the porn sites went down when Game of Thrones came back on’," she told Harper's Bazaar. "I’m like, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale?' I f**king love that show, and I cried when it ended because I couldn’t handle not seeing it. That is all sex and nudity. There are so many shows centered around this very true fact that people reproduce,” she added. “People f**k for pleasure—it’s part of life." Clarke also told The Telegraph that she and the rest of the crew who are in the midst of filming for the final season are under a strict total social media ban, and that HBO is stopping at no lengths to prevent any spoilers from leaking about the highly anticipated eighth season. She said they were filming "number of different endings" so that "none of the cast know what the actual ending is" either. Guess we'll just have to wait and see!