Emilia Clarke opened up about life after her brain surgery and how the injury altered her “sense of self.”
The 37-year-old actress had two brain surgeries, one in 2011 and another in 2013, after suffering brain aneurysms.
“When you have a brain injury, because it alters your sense of self on such a dramatic level, all of the insecurities you have going into the workplace quadruple overnight,” Clarke told U.K.’s Big Issue.
“The first fear we all had was: ‘Oh my God, am I going to get fired? Am I going to get fired because they think I’m not capable of completing the job?'” she said.
EMILIA CLARKE REVEALS SHE IS ‘MISSING’ PARTS OF HER BRAIN AFTER SUFFERING TWO ANEURYSMS
Emilia Clarke revealed that her aneurysms altered her “sense of self.” (Getty Images)
Clarke explained she often worried she would suffer another brain hemorrhage while filming or while appearing on TV.
“Well, if I’m going to die, I better die on live TV,” she recalled thinking.
Clarke suffered her first aneurysm in 2011, shortly after the actress wrapped filming on the hit HBO show “Game of Thrones.”
In 2013, a surgery to remove another aneurysm doctors had found failed and Clarke was left with a brain bleed.
Emilia Clarke starred as Daenerys Targaryen in “Game of Thrones.” (AP)
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“Game of Thrones” ran from 2011 until 2019. (HBO)
“I spent a month in the hospital again and, at certain points, I lost all hope,” Clarke wrote in an essay for the New Yorker. “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,” she added. “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.”
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Emilia Clarke’s two aneurysms left parts of her brain “missing.” (Ian West/PA Images via Getty Images)
Clarke later revealed parts of her brain were missing after the two aneurysms.
“I am in the really, really, really small minority of people that can survive that… There’s quite a bit missing!” Clarke explained on BBC One.
“Because strokes, basically, as soon as any part of your brain doesn’t get blood for a second, it’s gone. And so the blood finds a different route to get around but then whatever bit it’s missing is therefore gone.”
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