Emilia Clarke opened up about the emotional toll of surviving multiple brain aneurysms.
She even admitted she once believed she was “meant to die.”
The Game of Thrones alum spoke on the How to Fail podcast about undergoing surgeries in 2011 and 2013 after life threatening aneurysms.
“I shut down emotionally,” Clarke recalled. “It became this thing where I just couldn’t look anyone in the eye … because you’re walking around knowing that your body has failed you. Your brain has failed you.”
Clarke described her first operation as leaving her convinced she had “cheated death” and that another crisis was inevitable.
“This is going to come and get me,” she remembered thinking.
The second time, however, she felt the opposite: grateful to have survived and determined to carry on.
The Emmy nominee admitted she became hypersensitive to headaches, often fearing another aneurysm.
“There was no other option but to carry on,” she said, crediting her upbringing for instilling resilience.
Still, she acknowledged she did not give herself “grace” during recovery.
Clarke first went public with her health battles in a 2019 New Yorker essay, revealing that her initial aneurysm caused a stroke and required emergency surgery, while the second led to a “massive bleed” and a skull operation.
She later launched the SameYou charity to support brain injury survivors.
In 2022, Clarke stunned fans by revealing “quite a bit” of her brain is missing, marveling at her ability to live normally despite the damage.
“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 told BBC One at the time.
Now, Clarke says she is part of the “really, really small minority of people that can survive that,” reflecting on her journey with a mix of honesty and gratitude.
