Until the much-debated final season of Game of Thrones, Emilia Clarke's character, Daenerys Targaryen, was seen as a feminist icon by many. And then a diagnosis: She'd had a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a type of stroke generally caused when an aneurysm-a balloon-like bulge in an artery-ruptures and spills blood into the space surrounding the brain. What followed was a blur: a siren, an ambulance, jumbled voices, a brain MRI. She made it through a couple of exercises before practically crawling back to the locker room, where she vomited as the stabbing pain in her head worsened. 'I felt as though an elastic band were squeezing my brain,' Clarke recalled in her essay. But on that morning in a London gym, she experienced a headache so intense she could barely put on her sneakers. She had just finished filming the first season of Game of Thrones and was feeling vulnerable and stressed by the responsibility of shouldering a big role in an attention-getting new TV series. 'A stigma is still attached to it, and this must change.'Ĭlarke's first aneurysm occurred in February 2011.

'I hope that people will find themselves more able to admit to having sustained a brain injury,' Clarke says. She has now become a leading advocate for neurologic rehabilitation, and in April 2020 she was honored with the Public Leadership in Neurology Award from the American Brain Foundation, the philanthropic partner of the American Academy of Neurology whose purpose is to promote and invest in research across the spectrum of brain disorders. Shortly before the final season premiered in 2019, Clarke revealed the source of that strength in an article she wrote for the New Yorker: surviving two potentially fatal brain aneurysms during Game of Thrones' early years. In the course of playing an 'incredibly strong woman,' the British actor commented in a 2019 HBO video, 'the strength I had to find to play her that I had that strength myself.' Clarke's performance as Daenerys would earn her four Emmy nominations as Game of Thrones went on to become one of the era's most talked-about shows, running for eight seasons and winning a total of 59 Emmys, including Outstanding Drama Series four times. When Game of Thrones debuted on HBO in 2011, it gave then-24-year-old actor Emilia Clarke the first meaty role of her career: Daenerys Targaryen, otherwise known as Khaleesi of the Great Sea Grass, or Mother of Dragons. Emilia Clarke says she's recovered '100 percent' after two brain aneurysms. Her charity, SameYou, reflects that strength-and her commitment to people with brain injury.

Emilia Clarke Works to End Stigma Around Brain Injury The Game of Thrones actor emerged stronger after two brain aneurysms.

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