Emilia Clarke Shares New Pics After Brain Surgery

Emilia Clarke

• In a new interview with CBS This Morning, Emilia Clarke revealed new details about her two brain aneurysms.
• The Game of Thrones star also shared never-before-seen photos of herself in the hospital after brain surgery.
• Emilia suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage in 2011, a.k.a. bleeding in the space that surrounds the brain.

In March, Emilia Clarke shared an essay written for the New Yorker on how she survived two life-threatening brain aneurysms while filming HBO's hit series Game of Thrones.

Now, less than a week away from the series' final season, Emilia opened up to CBS This Morning with new details on her brain injury, as well as never-before-seen photos from after her brain surgeries.

In the CBS interview, Emilia recalled the day in February 2011 when her first aneurysm ruptured: "Basically I was in the gym, the most excruciating pain, like an elastic band just went, like, snap in my head," she said. "An enormous amount of pressure suddenly, and then very very very quickly, I realized I couldn't stand and I couldn't walk, and in that moment I knew I was being brain damaged."

Emilia suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage, or bleeding in the space that surrounds the brain. But miraculously, Emilia was back to work on season two of Game of Thrones just six weeks later.

Two years after that, Emilia was back in the hospital with another aneurysm-and this time, it almost killed her, she said. "With the second one, there was a bit of my brain that actually died," she said, explaining that "if part of your brain doesn't get blood to it for a minute, it will just no longer work. It's like you short circuit. So I had that."

Emilia said that her greatest fear after her second stroke was that she had lost the ability to act. "That was a deep paranoia, from the first one as well. I was like, 'What if something has short-circuited in my brain and I can't act anymore?' I mean, literally it's been my reason for living for a very long time!"

Her recovery period from her second brain surgery was also more difficult than her first-both mentally and physically. "With the second one, I found it much harder to stay optimistic," she said. "I definitely went through a period of being down, to put it mildly."

But Emilia's character on Game of Thrones-Daenerys Targaryen-helped her through the toughest times. "You go on set and you play a badass and you walk through fire and that became the thing that saved me from considering my own mortality," she said.

As of now, Emilia is "completely in the clear," and she's putting all of her energy into getting her new charity, SameYou , a charity that focuses on neurorehabilitation, off the ground. "I really, really am going to put my heart soul an back into transforming aftercare for brain injury recovery.

Honestly, all of this makes Emilia (and Dany) seem even more badass now, right?




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