Emilia Clarke shares first warning sign of brain aneurysm that was ‘meant to kill her’
Emilia Clarke's legendary performance in Game of Thrones may never be forgotten but the actress was very close to only giving us one season.
The Brit got her big break after being cast as Daenerys Targaryen in the hit HBO show, which went on to become one of the most popular series of all times, even in spite of a universally hated final season.
Clarke, of course, had to appear naked in the very first moments of the pilot episode and has previously explained why she didn't want to use a body double, while she's also spoken openly about her intimate moments with her on-screen husband Jason Momoa.
However, a real-life medical emergency could have very easily killed the celebrity before the second season, after she suffered a brain aneurysm while working with her personal trainer at the gym.
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The 39-year-old previously spoke with The New Yorker about her health scare and the first warning signs she experienced before things became drastic.
She said: "I was getting dressed in the locker room of a gym in Crouch End, North London, when I started to feel a bad headache coming on. I was so fatigued that I could barely put on my sneakers. When I started my workout, I had to force myself through the first few exercises.
"Then my trainer had me get into the plank position, and I immediately felt as though an elastic band were squeezing my brain. I tried to ignore the pain and push through it, but I just couldn’t. I told my trainer I had to take a break. "Somehow, almost crawling, I made it to the locker room. I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill. Meanwhile, the pain—shooting, stabbing, constricting pain—was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged.
"For a few moments, I tried to will away the pain and the nausea. I said to myself, 'I will not be paralysed.' I moved my fingers and toes to make sure that was true. To keep my memory alive, I tried to recall, among other things, some lines from Game of Thrones."
Clarke was rushed to hospital in an ambulance and quickly underwent brain surgery which proved successful but also saw her suffer from aphasia, a language disorder which impacts a person's ability to speak, understand, read and write.
In a 2026 interview on Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, she added: “I was in the gym doing a plank and had my first brain haemorrhage and then spent the next two weeks with my agent trying to not tell HBO until they knew I wouldn’t die."
It took her a few weeks to be able to speak her own name and after five weeks she was eventually released from hospital, where she quickly threw herself back into GOT filming in Dubrovnik.
Her issues didn't end there however as another smaller aneurysm in her brain grew and surgery in Manhattan went wrong, as she suffered a 'massive bleed' and they were forced to operate again, this time drilling through her skull.
She said: "I spent a month in the hospital again and, at certain points, I lost all hope. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. There was terrible anxiety, panic attacks.
"I was raised never to say, 'It’s not fair'; I was taught to remember that there is always someone who is worse off than you. But, going through this experience for the second time, all hope receded. I felt like a shell of myself. So much so that I now have a hard time remembering those dark days in much detail.
"My mind has blocked them out. But I do remember being convinced that I wasn’t going to live."
Speaking with Day, she added: "When you have a brain injury, you move around in the world, and for me, what happened after the first and specifically after the second, I was just convinced that I had cheated death and I was meant to die, and that every day that’s all I could think about.
“It was the opposite of ‘I survived. I feel great’.It was this ‘I’m not meant to be here. This is going to come and get me’.
“It just cuts you off from being able to engage with the outside world, because you’re walking around knowing that your body has failed you, your brain has failed you."
Clarke also admitted that headaches now still trigger trauma from her previous experiences and leave her fearing that the worst might happen again.
Although she has thankfully avoided any issues with her brain in recent years, the Me Before You actor recently admitted that she was forced into hospital with a rib injury, which she suffered while shooting some sex scenes in her new show Ponies.
Topics: Emilia Clarke, Game of Thrones, Celebrity, TV
James Moorhouse