Clarke is ‘a hundred per cent’ after aneurysms

GAME OF THRONES ACTRESS Emilia Clarke revealed Thursday that she has had two life-threatening aneurysms, and two brain surgeries, since the show began. She had the first aneurysm in 2011 at age 24 while working out at a London gym.

“Just when all my childhood dreams seemed to have come true, I nearly lost my mind and then my life,” Clarke writes in a first-person story in The New Yorker . “I’ve never told this story publicly, but now it’s time.” Clarke said she was suffering from serious stress when the artery burst in her brain. Much of it came from constant press questions about the nudity of her character, a conquering queen.

She said she suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage. She was unable to speak her full name even weeks later. The second surgery, which was more invasive and involved opening her skull, came after Clarke finished shooting the third season. “I looked as though I had been through a war more gruesome than any that Daenerys experienced,” Clarke writes. “I emerged from the operation with a drain coming out of my head. Bits of my skull had been replaced by titanium. These days, you can’t see the scar that curves from my scalp to my ear, but I didn’t know at first that it wouldn’t be visible.”

Despite thinking she would die, Clarke has now recovered beyond her “most unreasonable hopes”. She says she is now “at a hundred per cent” and has helped develop a charity that supports people recovering from brain injuries and strokes. AP, IANS

I looked as though I had been through a war more gruesome than any that Daenerys (her Game of Thrones character) experienced.” Emilia Clarke