Emilia Clarke has felt the relatable pressure of fighting through health struggles for the sake of job security.
In a June 2024 interview with Big Issue, a U.K.-based magazine, the 37-year-old reflected on the stress of returning to work after having survived two brain aneurysms. According to the actor, her two severe health experiences occurred during the early seasons of her time on the HBO series “Game of Thrones.”
Speaking to the outlet, she explained how, despite the critical brain injuries, she pushed through, knowing that her job could make or break her career.
“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,” she explained in her interview. “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?’”
Clarke has spoken about having survived two brain aneurysms in the past, the first in 2011 and the second in 2013. Read on for everything she’s said.
2011 — Clarke experiences her first aneurysm
In a 2019 essay for The New Yorker, Clarke revealed that she’d experienced a subarachnoid hemorrhage caused by a ruptured aneurysm not long after the first season of “Game of Thrones” had been under her belt.
“I started to feel a bad headache coming on. I was so fatigued that I could barely put on my sneakers,” she wrote at the time, explaining that the event happened while she was working out at a gym. “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.”
Clarke underwent emergency surgery, which was followed by a one-month hospital stay and a difficult recovery period. During that time, doctors…
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