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How unknown British actress Emilia Clarke became a breakout star on 'Game of Thrones'

Just a few short years ago, unknown British actress Emilia Clarke had just two filming credits on her résumé: walk-on roles in a soap opera and a made-for-TV movie.

Now the "Mother of Dragons" reportedly earns north of $7 million per season  in "Game of Thrones," the most watched show in HBO history. Season five recently came to a close.

July 1, Clarke reprises the role of Sarah Connor in "Terminator Genisys."

Born in the fall of 1986, Emilia Clarke grew up in the picturesque county of Buckinghamshire, in the south of England.

Source: Marie Claire

At boarding school, she coxed, or steered, the boys' eight-rower boat. That is, until she steered the team down the wrong tunnel and got them disqualified at a Henley regatta.

Source: The Guardian

A girlie-girl, she developed an early obsession with Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady." She would often say, "I swear on Chanel," when she wanted to be taken seriously.

Source: Harpers Bazaar

Clarke attended the famed Drama Centre London, which counts Colin Firth, Michael Fassbender, and Tom Hardy among its alumni.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Her first television appearance was a walk-on role in "Doctors," a UK soap opera based in a fictitious hospital.

A year later, she played a teen in the made-for-TV monster movie "Triassic Attack." The film follows a sheriff as he battles three dinosaur fossils brought to life in a small town.

Fresh out of drama school, she worked six jobs to pay the rent. When her agent called to say she landed an audition for a new HBO show, Clarke had to call in sick to her catering job ...

In preparation for the "Game of Thrones" audition, she "Wikipedia-ed the crap out of" George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series and listened to Tupac Shakur music to feel fierce.

Source: Marie Claire and  The Hollywood Reporter

"We saw hundreds of people for the role," said D.B. Weiss, screenwriter and executive producer of "Game of Thrones. "This character needed to step into Joan of Arc territory, to deliver a messianic level of intensity. There was only one actress [we saw] who could do that.”

Clarke's character, Daenerys Targaryen, is a strong, confident, and courageous young woman on a quest to reclaim the Iron Throne for the House of Targaryen.

In season one, Daenerys hatched three dragons, earning her the moniker "Mother of Dragons." In real life, Clarke wears a golden necklace inscribed with the initials "MOD," given to her by Weiss and showrunner David Benioff.

Source: Marie Claire

She's since tried to steal the dragon eggs from set, to no avail.

Souce: The Hollywood Reporter

There's an infamous scene in which Daenerys eats a raw stallion heart for part of a ritual. Clarke had to eat 25 of them, and said, "They tasted like congealed jam, with a hint of bleach."

In 2013, she received an Emmy nomination for best supporting actress in a drama series.

The show's leads, Clarke, Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), Kit Harington (Jon Snow), and Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister), banded together to negotiate higher salaries.

Clarke will reportedly make $7 million a season by season 7, which has yet to be green-lit.

Still, Clarke has other sources of income now. She played Jude Law's daughter in the British black comedy "Dom Hemingway."

She also played Holly Golightly in the Broadway version of "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Critics were not kind, and the show closed after 38 performances.

The role even required her to sing! Clarke has hinted before about a potential foray into a singing career.

There have been opportunities she's turned down, too. Clarke refused the role of Anastasia Steele in "Fifty Shades of Grey" because she didn't want to be labeled for doing nudity.

Through it all, Clarke's managed to stay out of the spotlight and out of trouble. She briefly dated "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane.

She manages to go unnoticed in public because her natural dark hair looks nothing like Daenerys'. That's about to change ...

July 1, Clarke stars alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Terminator Genisys," Paramount and Skydance's estimated $170 million reboot of the 31-year-old franchise. She has top billing as Sarah Connor.

The role was a little more physical than "Game of Thrones" requires. “The hours were so long and the guns were so heavy, so I had to get myself into a place where I wouldn’t crap out at four o’clock,” she says.

And there's more work to be done. "'Game of Thrones' opened a lot of doors," Clarke said in a recent interview. "It opened them all."

See another young actress' rise to fame.

How Margot Robbie went from Aussie soap-opera star to blockbuster bombshell »

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A Battle for My Life

By Emilia Clarke

Just when all my childhood dreams seemed to have come true, I nearly lost my mind and then my life. I’ve never told this story publicly, but now it’s time.

It was the beginning of 2011. I had just finished filming the first season of “ Game of Thrones ,” a new HBO series based on George R. R. Martin’s “ A Song of Ice and Fire ” novels. With almost no professional experience behind me, I’d been given the role of Daenerys Targaryen, also known as Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Lady of Dragonstone, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons. As a young princess, Daenerys is sold in marriage to a musclebound Dothraki warlord named Khal Drogo. It’s a long story—eight seasons long—but suffice to say that she grows in stature and in strength. She becomes a figure of power and self-possession. Before long, young girls would dress in platinum wigs and flowing robes to be Daenerys Targaryen for Halloween.

The show’s creators, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, have said that my character is a blend of Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and Lawrence of Arabia. And yet, in the weeks after we finished shooting the first season, despite all the looming excitement of a publicity campaign and the series première, I hardly felt like a conquering spirit. I was terrified. Terrified of the attention, terrified of a business I barely understood, terrified of trying to make good on the faith that the creators of “Thrones” had put in me. I felt, in every way, exposed. In the very first episode, I appeared naked, and, from that first press junket onward, I always got the same question: some variation of “You play such a strong woman, and yet you take off your clothes. Why?” In my head, I’d respond, “How many men do I need to kill to prove myself?”

To relieve the stress, I worked out with a trainer. I was a television actor now, after all, and that is what television actors do. We work out. On the morning of February 11, 2011, I was getting dressed in the locker room of a gym in Crouch End, North London, when I started to feel a bad headache coming on. I was so fatigued that I could barely put on my sneakers. When I started my workout, I had to force myself through the first few exercises.

Then my trainer had me get into the plank position, and I immediately felt as though an elastic band were squeezing my brain. I tried to ignore the pain and push through it, but I just couldn’t. I told my trainer I had to take a break. 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.

For a few moments, I tried to will away the pain and the nausea. I said to myself, “I will not be paralyzed.” I moved my fingers and toes to make sure that was true. To keep my memory alive, I tried to recall, among other things, some lines from “Game of Thrones.”

I heard a woman’s voice coming from the next stall, asking me if I was O.K. No, I wasn’t. She came to help me and maneuvered me onto my side, in the recovery position. Then everything became, at once, noisy and blurry. I remember the sound of a siren, an ambulance; I heard new voices, someone saying that my pulse was weak. I was throwing up bile. Someone found my phone and called my parents, who live in Oxfordshire, and they were told to meet me at the emergency room of Whittington Hospital.

A fog of unconsciousness settled over me. From an ambulance, I was wheeled on a gurney into a corridor filled with the smell of disinfectant and the noises of people in distress. Because no one knew what was wrong with me, the doctors and nurses could not give me any drugs to ease the pain.

Finally, I was sent for an MRI, a brain scan. The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain. I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture. As I later learned, about a third of SAH patients die immediately or soon thereafter. For the patients who do survive, urgent treatment is required to seal off the aneurysm, as there is a very high risk of a second, often fatal bleed. If I was to live and avoid terrible deficits, I would have to have urgent surgery. And, even then, there were no guarantees.

I was taken by ambulance to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, a beautiful redbrick Victorian pile in central London. It was nighttime. My mum slept in my hospital ward, slumped in a chair, as I kept falling in and out of sleep, in a state of drugged wooziness, shooting pain, and persistent nightmares.

I remember being told that I should sign a release form for surgery. Brain surgery? I was in the middle of my very busy life—I had no time for brain surgery. But, finally, I settled down and signed. And then I was unconscious. For the next three hours, surgeons went about repairing my brain. This would not be my last surgery, and it would not be the worst. I was twenty-four years old.

Listen: David Remnick interviews Emilia Clarke on The New Yorker Radio Hour.

I grew up in Oxford and rarely gave a thought to my health. Nearly all I thought about was acting. My dad was a sound designer. He worked on productions of “West Side Story” and “Chicago” in the West End. My mother was, and is, a businesswoman, the vice-president of marketing for a global management consultancy. We weren’t wealthy, but my brother and I went to private schools. Our parents, who wanted everything for us, struggled to keep up with the fees.

I have no clear memory of when I first decided to be an actor. I’m told I was around three or four. When I went with my dad to theatres, I was entranced by backstage life: the gossip, the props, the costumes, all the urgent and whispered hubbub in the near darkness. When I was three, my father took me to see a production of “Show Boat.” Although I was ordinarily a loud and antsy child, I sat silent and rapt in the audience for more than two hours. When the curtain came down, I stood on my seat and clapped wildly over my head.

I was hooked. At home, I played a VHS tape of “My Fair Lady” so many times that it snapped from wear. I think I took the Pygmalion story as a sign of how, and with enough rehearsal and a good director, you can become someone else. I don’t think my dad was pleased when I announced that I wanted to be an actor. He knew plenty of actors and, to his mind, they were habitually neurotic and unemployed.

My school, in Oxford, the Squirrel School, was idyllic, orderly, and sweet. When I was five, I got the lead part in a play. When it came time to take the stage and deliver my lines, though, I forgot everything. I just stood there, center stage, stock-still, taking it all in. In the front row, the teachers were trying to help by mouthing my lines. But I just stood there, with no fear, very calm. It’s a state of mind that has carried me throughout my career. These days, I can be on a red carpet with a thousand cameras clicking away and I’m unfazed. Of course, put me at a dinner party with six people and that’s another matter.

With time, I got better at acting. I even remembered my lines. But I was hardly a prodigy. When I was ten, my dad took me to an audition in the West End for a production of Neil Simon’s “The Goodbye Girl.” When I got inside, I realized that every girl trying out for this part was singing a song from “Cats.” The only thing I could come up with was an English folk song, “Donkey Riding.” After listening rather patiently, someone asked, “How about something more . . . contemporary?” I sang the Spice Girls hit “Wannabe.” My dad’s hands practically covered his face. I didn’t get the part, and I think it was a blessing. My dad said, “It would have been hard reading anything bad about you in the paper.”

But I kept at it. In school productions, I played Anita in “West Side Story,” Abigail in “The Crucible,” one of the witches in “Macbeth,” Viola in “Twelfth Night.” After secondary school, I took a gap year, during which I worked as a waitress and went backpacking in Asia. Then I started classes at the Drama Centre London to pursue my B.A. As fledgling actors, we studied everything from “The Cherry Orchard” to “The Wire.” I didn’t get the ingénue parts. Those went to the tall, willowy, impossibly blond girls. I got cast as a Jewish mother in “Awake and Sing!” You should hear my Bronx accent.

After graduation, I made myself a promise: for one year, I would take only roles with some promise. I made the rent working in a pub, in a call center, and at an obscure museum, telling people that “the loos are just to the right.” Seconds lasted days. But I was determined: one year of no bad productions, no plays above a bar.

Read: More from The New Yorker on “Game of Thrones.”

In the spring of 2010, my agent called to say that auditions were being held in London for a new HBO series. The pilot for “Game of Thrones” had been flawed and they wanted to re-cast, among other roles, Daenerys. The part called for an otherworldly, bleached-blond woman of mystery. I’m a short, dark-haired, curvy Brit. Whatever. To prepare, I learned these very strange lines for two scenes, one in Episode 4, in which my brother goes to hit me, and one in Episode 10, in which I walk into a fire and survive, unscathed.

In those days, I thought of myself as healthy. Sometimes I got a little light-headed, because I often had low blood pressure and a low heart rate. Once in a while, I’d get dizzy and pass out. When I was fourteen, I had a migraine that kept me in bed for a couple of days, and in drama school I’d collapse once in a while. But it all seemed manageable, part of the stress of being an actor and of life in general. Now I think that I might have been experiencing warning signs of what was to come.

I read for “Game of Thrones” in a tiny studio in Soho. Four days later, I got a call. Apparently, the audition hadn’t been a disaster. I was told to fly to Los Angeles in three weeks and read for Benioff and Weiss and the network executives. I started working out intensely to prepare. They flew me business class. I stole all the free tea from the lounge. At the audition, I tried not to look when I spotted another actor––tall, blond, willowy, beautiful––walking by. I read two scenes in a dark auditorium, for an audience of producers and executives. When it was over, I blurted out, “Can I do anything else?”

David Benioff said, “You can do a dance.” Never wanting to disappoint, I did the funky chicken and the robot. In retrospect, I could have ruined it all. I’m not the best dancer.

As I was leaving the auditorium, they ran after me and said, “Congratulations, Princess!” I had the part.

I could hardly catch my breath. I went back to the hotel, where some people invited me to a party on the roof. “I think I’m good!” I told them. Instead, I went to my room, ate Oreos, watched “Friends,” and called everyone I knew.

That first surgery was what is known as “minimally invasive,” meaning that they did not open up my skull. Rather, using a technique called endovascular coiling, the surgeon introduced a wire into one of the femoral arteries, in the groin; the wire made its way north, around the heart, and to the brain, where they sealed off the aneurysm.

The operation lasted three hours. When I woke, the pain was unbearable. I had no idea where I was. My field of vision was constricted. There was a tube down my throat and I was parched and nauseated. They moved me out of the I.C.U. after four days and told me that the great hurdle was to make it to the two-week mark. If I made it that long with minimal complications, my chances of a good recovery were high.

One night, after I’d passed that crucial mark, a nurse woke me and, as part of a series of cognitive exercises, she said, “What’s your name?” My full name is Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke. But now I couldn’t remember it. Instead, nonsense words tumbled out of my mouth and I went into a blind panic. I’d never experienced fear like that—a sense of doom closing in. I could see my life ahead, and it wasn’t worth living. I am an actor; I need to remember my lines. Now I couldn’t recall my name.

I was suffering from a condition called aphasia, a consequence of the trauma my brain had suffered. Even as I was muttering nonsense, my mum did me the great kindness of ignoring it and trying to convince me that I was perfectly lucid. But I knew I was faltering. In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug. I asked the medical staff to let me die. My job—my entire dream of what my life would be—centered on language, on communication. Without that, I was lost.

I was sent back to the I.C.U. and, after about a week, the aphasia passed. I was able to speak. I knew my name—all five bits. But I was also aware that there were people in the beds around me who didn’t make it out of the I.C.U. I was continually reminded of just how fortunate I was. One month after being admitted, I left the hospital, longing for a bath and fresh air. I had press interviews to do and, in a matter of weeks, I was scheduled to be back on the set of “Game of Thrones.”

I went back to my life, but, while I was in the hospital, I was told that I had a smaller aneurysm on the other side of my brain, and it could “pop” at any time. The doctors said, though, that it was small and it was possible it would remain dormant and harmless indefinitely. We would just keep a careful watch. And recovery was hardly instant. There was still the pain to deal with, and morphine to keep it at bay. I told my bosses at “Thrones” about my condition, but I didn’t want it to be a subject of public discussion and dissection. The show must go on!

Even before we began filming Season 2, I was deeply unsure of myself. I was often so woozy, so weak, that I thought I was going to die. Staying at a hotel in London during a publicity tour, I vividly remember thinking, I can’t keep up or think or breathe, much less try to be charming. I sipped on morphine in between interviews. The pain was there, and the fatigue was like the worst exhaustion I’d ever experienced, multiplied by a million. And, let’s face it, I’m an actor. Vanity comes with the job. I spent way too much time thinking about how I looked. If all this weren’t enough, I seemed to whack my head every time I tried to get in a taxi.

Read: George R. R. Martin on his “Song of Ice and Fire” series .

The reaction to Season 1 was, of course, fantastic, though I had very little knowledge then of how the world kept score. When a friend called me exclaiming, “You’re No. 1 on IMDb!” I said, “What is IMDb?”

On the first day of shooting for Season 2, in Dubrovnik, I kept telling myself, “I am fine, I’m in my twenties, I’m fine.” I threw myself into the work. But, after that first day of filming, I barely made it back to the hotel before I collapsed of exhaustion.

On the set, I didn’t miss a beat, but I struggled. Season 2 would be my worst. I didn’t know what Daenerys was doing. If I am truly being honest, every minute of every day I thought I was going to die.

In 2013, after finishing Season 3, I took a job on Broadway, playing Holly Golightly. The rehearsals were wonderful, but it was clear pretty soon that it was not going to be a success. The whole thing lasted only a couple of months.

While I was still in New York for the play, with five days left on my SAG insurance, I went in for a brain scan—something I now had to do regularly. The growth on the other side of my brain had doubled in size, and the doctor said we should “take care of it.” I was promised a relatively simple operation, easier than last time. Not long after, I found myself in a fancy-pants private room at a Manhattan hospital. My parents were there. “See you in two hours,” my mum said, and off I went for surgery, another trip up the femoral artery to my brain. No problem.

Except there was. When they woke me, I was screaming in pain. The procedure had failed. I had a massive bleed and the doctors made it plain that my chances of surviving were precarious if they didn’t operate again. This time they needed to access my brain in the old-fashioned way—through my skull. And the operation had to happen immediately.

The recovery was even more painful than it had been after the first surgery. I looked as though I had been through a war more gruesome than any that Daenerys experienced. I emerged from the operation with a drain coming out of my head. Bits of my skull had been replaced by titanium. These days, you can’t see the scar that curves from my scalp to my ear, but I didn’t know at first that it wouldn’t be visible. And there was, above all, the constant worry about cognitive or sensory losses. Would it be concentration? Memory? Peripheral vision? Now I tell people that what it robbed me of is good taste in men. But, of course, none of this seemed remotely funny at the time.

I spent a month in the hospital again and, at certain points, I lost all hope. 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. 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. And, what’s more, I was sure that the news of my illness would get out. And it did—for a fleeting moment. Six weeks after the surgery, the National Enquirer ran a short story. A reporter asked me about it and I denied it.

But now, after keeping quiet all these years, I’m telling you the truth in full. Please believe me: I know that I am hardly unique, hardly alone. Countless people have suffered far worse, and with nothing like the care I was so lucky to receive.

A few weeks after that second surgery, I went with a few other cast members to Comic-Con, in San Diego. The fans at Comic-Con are hardcore; you don’t want to disappoint them. There were several thousand people in the audience, and, right before we went on to answer questions, I was hit by a horrific headache. Back came that sickeningly familiar sense of fear. I thought, This is it. My time is up; I’ve cheated death twice and now he’s coming to claim me. As I stepped offstage, my publicist looked at me and asked what was wrong. I told her, but she said that a reporter from MTV was waiting for an interview. I figured, if I’m going to go, it might as well be on live television.

But I survived. I survived MTV and so much more. In the years since my second surgery I have healed beyond my most unreasonable hopes. I am now at a hundred per cent. Beyond my work as an actor, I’ve decided to throw myself into a charity I’ve helped develop in conjunction with partners in the U.K. and the U.S. It is called SameYou , and it aims to provide treatment for people recovering from brain injuries and stroke. I feel endless gratitude—to my mum and brother, to my doctors and nurses, to my friends. Every day, I miss my father, who died of cancer in 2016, and I can never thank him enough for holding my hand to the very end.

There is something gratifying, and beyond lucky, about coming to the end of “Thrones.” I’m so happy to be here to see the end of this story and the beginning of whatever comes next.

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By Robert Sullivan

Emilia Clarke

Who Is Emilia Clarke?

Emilia Clarke developed an interest in acting at a young age, and after graduating from secondary school she attended the renowned Drama Centre London. Following various small roles on television, Clarke's big break came in 2011 when she landed the role of Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO hit series Game of Thrones . Since then she has starred on Broadway and been cast in films like Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Clarke was born in London, England, on October 23, 1986. Raised in the countryside of Oxfordshire, her interest in acting began at an early age, when her mother took her to a production of the classic musical Show Boat , on which her father was working as a sound engineer. Accompanying her father on future trips to the theater would only deepen her fascination.

Movies and TV Shows

'game of thrones'.

After completing her studies at the Drama Centre in 2009, Clarke set to work building her career, landing her first television role in the BBC dramatic series Doctors and appearing in several commercials. A more significant role came the following year, in the made-for-TV horror/sci-fi movie Triassic Attack (2010). But despite this early television work, Clarke was holding several day jobs to make ends meet. Her big break finally came when she received a call from her agent asking her if she could audition for the new HBO series Game of Thrones . Clarke immediately called in sick to the catering company she was scheduled to work for, and after a successful audition was cast in the role of Daenerys Targaryen, would-be queen and Mother of Dragons, a role originally held by Tamzin Merchant, who left the show after filming the unaired pilot.

Based on the series of novels by George R. R. Martin , Game of Thrones was an immediate and massive hit and ran for eight wildly successful seasons before wrapping in May 2019. For her standout role, Clarke won several awards and garnered multiple Emmy and Screen Actors Guild nominations.

"I've had the good fortune of being in this incredible show with this incredible character," she told NPR in 2019. "And my goodness, if I were to get stereotyped as the Mother of Dragons, I could ask for worse. It's really quite wonderful."

Later in the year, during an appearance on Dax Shepard's podcast, the actress revealed that she felt pressured to film nude scenes for the show.

'Breakfast at Tiffany's' on Broadway, 'Terminator Genisys'

Clarke’s newfound fame from Game of Thrones quickly led to other projects, including a starring role in the 2012 indie music drama Spike Island . In 2013 she made her first appearance on Broadway, cast as Holly Golightly in a stage production of Truman Capote ’s Breakfast at Tiffany ’s, and starred opposite Jude Law in the British comedy Dom Hemingway . After turning down the lead in 50 Shades of Grey — stating that she didn’t want to be pigeonholed in “nudity” roles — Clarke was cast as Sarah Connor opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Genisys , the 2015 installment of the Terminator saga.

'Solo: A Star Wars Story,' 'Last Christmas'

Clarke also starred in the romantic drama Me Before You (2016) and the much anticipated Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) as Qi'ra, Solo's childhood friend and romantic interest. Next up was the female lead of Kate, opposite Henry Golding's mysterious Tom, in the romantic comedy Last Christmas (2019).

Personal Life

The frequent subject of various gossip columns and tabloids, Emilia Clarke has been romantically linked to Seth MacFarlane , whom she dated for several months, and is rumored to have been involved with actors Cory Michael Smith (her co-star in Breakfast at Tiffany’s ), James Franco and Jai Courtney. In early 2019 it was reported she had ended her romance with director Charlie McDowell.

In a March 2019 essay for The New Yorker , Clarke revealed that she suffered two aneurysms during the early years of Game of Thrones . The first, which struck after the end of season 1 and required an emergency operation, left her unable to communicate in its aftermath and exhausted once production resumed. The actress underwent a more complicated procedure after the second season, leaving her in terrible pain. During her darkest days, she wrote, she considered suicide, and even while pushing forward she often worried she wouldn't survive.

QUICK FACTS

• Birth Year: 1986
• Birth date: October 23, 1986
• Birth City: London
• Birth Country: England
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: Emilia Clarke is best known for her role as Daenerys Targaryen in 'Game of Thrones.'
• Astrological Sign: Scorpio
• Rye St. Antony
• St. Edwards School, Oxford
• Drama Centre London

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Emilia Clarke Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/actors/emilia-clarke
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 10, 2021
• Original Published Date: July 22, 2015
• 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.

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How emilia clarke paid homage to ‘game of thrones’ with her new comic book.

In a wide-ranging interview, the actor dives into her Image Comics miniseries 'M.O.M.: Mother of Madness,' reflects on the ending of 'Thrones,' and talks the "unfinished business" of 'Solo.'

By Brian Davids

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“It didn’t come out of nowhere. I wanted Maya to be a single mother; I wanted that first and foremost,” Clarke tells The Hollywood Reporter . “So I’m not going to say I’m Jenny from the Block, but it’s an acknowledgment of how I’m able to give this beautiful fanbase this other thing that I did because they supported me and gave me the props when I was doing [ Game of Thrones ].”

Clarke is currently preparing for her upcoming role in Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion for Disney+, and after playing Daenerys for nearly a decade, she’s excited by what could be her next long-term character.

“I mean, I should be so lucky is what I’ll say to that,” Clark shares. “Everyone I know and everyone I’ve spoken to who is a part of the Marvel universe — and actors talk ! Everyone has only the highest praise to offer. There’s a reason why actors stay in it. They’re so loved because they’re having loads of fun. So I’m down for that.”

Clarke is also looking back at 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story , which trended last month on its 3-year anniversary as part of an effort by fans to see that story continue. But as much as she’d love to return to the role of Qi’ra, Clarke has yet to hear anything about a possible Disney+ future for her fan-favorite character.

And of course she’s seen the recent photos of the newest Targaryens from HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon .

“It’s very surreal. I mean, I’ve been prepped for this because Miguel [Sapochnik], who’s the co-showrunner, is a really dear friend of mine,” Clarke says. “But yeah, it’s crazy! Those pictures came out and I was like, ‘Whoa! Whoa!’ I was on my own last time. I didn’t know I had pals. I could’ve had a bunch of friends to hang out with, but yes, it’s mildly surreal to be seeing all of that again. But good luck to them is what I would say. I really mean that. “

In a recent conversation with THR , Clarke dives deep into Mother of Madness and why she wanted to try the comic book medium. She also looks back at the final season of Game of Thrones and how she’s made peace with the outcome of Dany’s arc. She even offers a bit of advice to House of the Dragon ‘s Targaryen actors, Matt Smith and Emma D’Arcy.

Emilia, M.O.M.: Mother of Madness is really well done.

Oh, thank you! It’s so weird to have made something, and then when someone says they like it, you’re like, “Oh my goodness!” So I really feel that. Whereas when you’re just a part of something as an actor, it’s very difficult to take that compliment because you’re like, “Whoa, there’s 700,000 other people that are the reason why this thing is good.” ( Laughs .)

So when I saw the first headline related to you and Mother of Madness, I did a double take like a lot of other people probably did. It was not on my 2021 bingo card as they say.

So for the uninitiated, what got the ball rolling on this project.

Well, the very literal version is having a funny conversation in the car with friends on the way to a Florence and the Machine gig, and we were looking at all the billboards with superheroes around us. So we joked about it, like, “Wouldn’t it be funny if there was a superhero that was very relatable and with a little bit more comedy? And wouldn’t that be a fun thing to do?” And then the idea just stuck with me. So then I started honing in on it, and I was like, “There’s a reason why I’m thinking that.” And the thing that people do know is that my career has been largely viewed in the halls of comic cons. I’ve been a part of some insanely massive franchise movies and television shows, and I’ve had incredible experiences with fans in a way that I do believe is quite unique. So I feel very at home in that community, and as a kid, not only was I reading comics, but I was reading fantasy literature as well. When Game of Thrones came about, I was like, “Yeah, this is the kind of book I would pick up and read myself.”

The comic that I hope we’ve reached, which I sure as hell didn’t do on my own, is this mix of the comedy, but there’s also the emotional truth within it because Maya doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing. I also wanted that because the relatable and modern way of looking at heroes is that they are like us. They do have the same issues. So I approached it with this 2020 perspective because the world that we’re living in now is incredibly different to 2, 3 or 5 years ago. So I wanted the comic to feel now and current. But that’s an incredibly long-winded answer to a very simple question. ( Laughs .)

And your fellow creatives are all women, right?

As you mentioned, the last decade has been a whirlwind for you. you starred on the biggest show ever; you made huge movies during your off-seasons; and you did all of this while dealing with something unimaginable . so as dreadful as the pandemic has been, was getting the chance to slow down the one silver lining of it all.

I never would’ve done it without it. I’m saying this now. I mean, my pandemic was still quite busy, but I’m not someone who sits idle very well. So to say it’s been enjoyable would really be pushing the boundaries of that word. ( Laughs .) But it has been profoundly insightful for me. I’ve figured out a lot of stuff that I didn’t realize the extent to how much I needed to figure out, and it’s been a journey. Global pandemic and everything that is horrific about that aside, yeah, it’s been interesting.

When I was growing up, I vividly remember how guys would refer to certain girls as “crazy” if they ever got upset or emotional. But if we ever got upset or emotional, we were “passionate” and “fiery.” Was that double standard a major building block for your comic?

Maya’s powers change based on how she’s feeling during menstruation. was each power a logical extension of each menstrual symptom.

That’s exactly what it was. When I feel scared, I want to disappear, so Maya should. When I feel happy, my laugh follows me around like a foghorn. And it’s also this idea about loud women, so I wanted her laugh to break glass. I wanted to hone in on the idea that when you’re angry, you get super strong. You hear about those moms who, to save their child, have superhuman strength and can lift a car themselves. And it’s this weird phenomenon that happens, so I was like, “That’s logical. That makes complete sense.” And when you’re happy you just feel light and wibbly and wobbly. I love Elastigirl [from The Incredibles ]. I absolutely adore her, and I’ve always thought that elasticity is so cool. So that power made logical sense for when Maya is happy. So those are the main hitters. Ultimately, I wanted it to all be very logical, so the reader can go, “Yeah, I get that.”

The comic is well-versed in pop culture. The social media personality who calls her fans “Advokaties” is a prime example of that. While you mentioned your love of comics and fantasy novels, are you also keen on pop culture in a grander sense?

One of my favorite lines in the comic is when Maya says, “You did twenty-two Marvel movies; you can give me five pages of expositional backstorying.” And sure enough, now you’re working for Marvel Studios.

( Laughs .) Yeah, that joke was definitely put in before I got the job. ( Laughs .) 100 percent.

I presume you read the Secret Invasion comics to prepare for your next character, but did you find yourself reading them from the perspective of an actor, as well as a newly-minted comic book creator?

It’s now difficult to unsee it. It’s just like when you make your first anything on screen. Game of Thrones was the first thing, and I’ll never forget going to the cinema for the first time after making it and being like, “Why I am wondering what take that is? Why am I wondering where they are filming? Oh no, I can see that they did this.” With every new medium, you learn a lot about it just by making something in it, and then you view that medium in a different way. And I grew to tell the calibre of what I was watching if I was just fully engrossed in the story. And I think the same thing will happen with comics when I’m reading them. You can’t turn off the bit that’s like, “Ah, OK. I know what all the technical terms are now. I know what this splash page means.” So forever and a day, when I read a comic, I think I will have that awareness in my head, which is glorious. Learning new stuff is always brilliant, I think.

In 2007, Paul Bettany did a voice role for an upcoming movie called Iron Man , and 14 years later, Marvel Studios has kept him rather busy to say the least. With the MCU still at the height of its powers, have you prepared yourself for the possibility that this role could be the next decade of your life?

There’s probably going to come a point where some studio executive tells you that they love mother of madness and want to adapt it into a movie or series. if they insist that you play maya, what do you think you would say to that.

Well, for the record, I really have to state that that isn’t why I made the comic. I made it for all the reasons that I’ve said, but let’s just cross that bridge if and when we come to it. ( Laughs .) The reason why I chose comic books as a medium to tell this story is because anything and everything is possible here in this world. And from a storytelling point of view, that allows your brain to just go, “OK cool, we can do anything.” And so when thinking of the movie side of what this is, it just wraps me up in knots, because then I’m like, “Well, what could you actually even do?” So then I stop thinking about it. ( Laughs .)

So what would you say to those who think Mother of Madness is an homage to a previous character [Daenerys Targaryen] of yours?

Besides being a single mom and a chemical engineer, maya is also a part-time online sex worker, which is quite relevant right now since a lot of people made ends meet this way during the height of the pandemic. this character detail actually reminded me of this new york paramedic who was outed by the new york post for doing exactly that..

Oh my God, I did not hear that. That’s horrific. Well, it’s a female story. “I can’t afford my tuition fees. I can’t afford to put food on the table. I’m a paramedic saving lives, and I can’t afford to live. I can’t afford to support my family.” And so what is there? That is there. Yeah, I really wanted to go to a bunch of different places with this and all the nods to it. It’s also a nod to the incredible social media world that we live in and the way you can have a complete other life online and be profitable from it. So there’s a bunch of other little details that you’ll see if the comics go on that I think is the modernity that I’m speaking of. I didn’t only want Maya to be relatable; I wanted the world to be familiar for people.

I remain intrigued by your Solo: A Star Wars Story character, Qi’ra, and I have to run a theory by you if you don’t mind.

So there’s a train heist that han (alden ehrenreich) and beckett (woody harrelson) tried to pull off, only it was upended by enfys nest (erin kellyman). and beckett was shocked since he and dryden (paul bettany) were supposed to be the only ones who knew about the train shipment., han and beckett then made their way to dryden’s yacht, where han reuinites with qi’ra. and shortly thereafter, qi’ra is caught off guard once she realizes that han and beckett were there together. the camera really focuses on her as she’s doing the math of the situation., so then they all talk with dryden, and beckett again mentions that they were supposed to be the only ones knew. and since qi’ra is dryden’s most trusted adviser, i’ve long believed that she was the one who leaked the train intel to enfys nest in order to get dryden out of her hair, and to strengthen this emerging rebellion that might even free her someday., so when she first realized that han and beckett were working together, she also recognized that she put han in jeopardy by divulging secrets to enfys nest. anyway, do you think qi’ra was undermining dryden and crimson dawn all along, i really appreciated that she loved han enough to leave him behind for his own safety..

Yeah, the ultimate sacrifice.

As much as I love the film and understand the following creative decision, I have to admit that I wasn’t crazy about Maul’s appearance because it took attention away from Qi’ra’s earlier decision to leave Han. It even led some viewers to think that she left Han behind because of Maul’s ominous threats towards her. At any rate, did you play her final decision regarding Han as one she made long before Maul’s transmission?

100 percent. She had to have a plan before, you know what I mean? She had to go into that situation with her own agenda and with her own plan, that the audience then catches up with after the fact.

All she wanted was her own ship and to not have to answer to anyone, and while Dryden’s yacht is now hers, she’s under a much worse thumb. It’s tragic.

I know. There’s always someone.

Well, I really hope she makes her way into the Disney+ universe at the very least. A woman crime boss who’s secretly helping the rebellion to atone for all the suffering she’s caused is just too tantalizing to ignore.

Oh, I know, and I agree. I really had pages about what her life was and what it would be afterwards. But I’m afraid I’ve heard nothing of [Disney+] being the case, so maybe I’ll just write it and send it to them. I’ll be like, “Hey guys, I’ve got a few ideas.” ( Laughs .)

Of all your past characters, is Qi’ra the one you’d most like to revisit?

So is it bizarre to see new targaryens already.

It’s very surreal. I mean, I’ve been prepped for this because Miguel [Sapochnik], who’s the co-showrunner, is a really dear friend of mine. So I’ve been chatting to him about it for a while. So I was prepped. But yeah, it’s crazy! Those pictures came out and I was like, “Whoa! Whoa!” I was on my own last time. I didn’t know I had pals. ( Laughs .) I could’ve had a bunch of friends to hang out with, but yes, it’s mildly surreal to be seeing all of that again. But good luck to them is what I would say. I really mean that.

You bleached your hair blonde for the final season. Is that something you’d recommend to the House of the Dragon actors if at all possible? Or is it not worth the damage?

No, it is not worth it. I’m speaking from the other side, and it’s not worth it. I literally cut off all my hair because I killed it with a load of bleach. ( Laughs .) If you like your hair, keep it your natural color. That goes for everyone. ( Laughs .)

Ahead of the final season, I remember you talking about the long walks you used to go on as you tried to reconcile Daenerys’ conclusion. Now that you’re 2-plus years removed from the series finale, have you been able to make peace with everything?

You created an amazing valley girl character named callie. are you interested in doing something with her on screen has anyone approached you about it.

( Clarke breaks into her ‘Callie from the Valley’ character .) Oh my God, thank you! ( Laughs .) I think about this, like, all the time. Um, I’m, like, always waiting for when, like, someone’s going to come up to me and be, like, “Oh my God, I’m ready for you to be a Valley girl. It’s going to be so rad.” ( Clarke breaks character .) Yeah, 100 percent [interested]. The comic has been such a release of creativity that I relished because I really love doing accents, characters and character stuff. But I’m just not at a point where anyone else agrees to the point where they’ll hire me to be this whole other person. But yeah, I would love to do a stupid, silly comedy about Callie from the Valley. I think that would be excellent.

*** The M.O.M.: Mother of Madness three-issue miniseries releases on July 21 and is now available for pre-order from Image Comics.

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Emilia Clarke

• Born October 23 , 1986 · London, England, UK
• Birth name Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke
• Height 5′ 2″ (1.57 m)
• British actress Emilia Clarke was born in London and grew up in Oxfordshire, England. Her father was a theatre sound engineer and her mother is a businesswoman. Her father was working on a theatre production of "Show Boat" and her mother took her along to the performance. This is when, at the age of 3, her passion for acting began. From 2000 to 2005, she attended St. Edward's School of Oxford, where she appeared in two school plays. She went on to study acting at the prestigious Drama Centre London, where she took part in 10 plays. During this time, Emilia first appeared on television with a guest role in the BBC soap opera Doctors (2000) . In 2010, after graduating from the Drama Centre London, Emilia got her first film role in the television movie Triassic Attack (2010) . In 2011, her breakthrough role came in when she replaced fellow newcomer Tamzin Merchant on Game of Thrones (2011) after the filming of the original pilot episode. From March to April 2013, she played Holly Golightly in a Broadway production of "Breakfast at Tiffany's". She played Sarah Connor in Terminator Genisys (2015) , opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger , Jai Courtney and Jason Clarke . She played the lead role of Louisa Clark in the romantic comedy blockbuster Me Before You (2016) and went on to star in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) as Qi'ra. Since her rise to prominence, Emilia has contributed to various charitable organisations. In 2018, she was named as the ambassador to the Royal College of Nursing because of her efforts in raising awareness about the working condition of the nurses in the UK. In 2019, she was named as the first ambassador for the global Nursing Now campaign. In 2019, in a personal essay published in The New Yorker, Emilia revealed that she had suffered from two life threatening brain aneurysms in 2011 and 2013. She launched her own charity SameYou in 2019, which aims to broaden neurorehabilitation access for young people after a brain injury or stroke. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Ajantrik
• Children No Children
• Parents Jenny Clarke Rick Clarke
• Relatives Bennett Clarke (Sibling)
• Eyes with central heterochromia. Both irises of her eyes are greyish blue coloured on the outer rim and hazel coloured on the inner rim.
• Petite and curvaceous figure.
• Bold and animated eyebrows.
• Pale skin and full lips.
• Happy-go-lucky personality.
• Was working three to six different jobs to get by before being cast in Game of Thrones (2011) including bartending, restaurant waitress, call centre, etc.
• She's an avid backpacker and has travelled through India, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and South Africa. Her sports skills include horseback-riding, ice skating, rowing, running, sailing, skiing, swimming and tennis.
• Replaced Tamzin Merchant in the role of Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones (2011) after the original pilot episode was filmed.
• Her eyes have central heterochromia. Both irises of her eyes are greyish blue coloured on the outer rim and hazel coloured on the inner rim.
• Has said that she is often not recognized in public without the extremely long platinum blonde wig she wears on Game of Thrones (2011) .
• [on her role as Daenerys Targaryen on the Game of Thrones (2011) series] Sometimes, I feel like the kid left out--the weirdo with the silver hair that no one likes to talk to.
• [on her Game of Thrones (2011) character] I felt for Daenerys. I felt for her situation as a woman. Being in such a male-dominated society, where she was being abused by the men around her--it was that sort of sympathy, I suppose it started off as that. But then as you track her story, the problems that she overcomes and the way that she deals with them with such grace and the way that she deals with them when she has no training. The only thing that she has is herself and her iron will--that's just a fabulous, incredible side to her character, really. And the fact that you watch her fall in love. You know, she meets the man that she loves more than anything else. She goes through painful events but she is still this strong, independent woman. And I think that, as a female, is what I really connected with.
• One of the many things I love about Daenerys [from Game of Thrones (2011) ] is she's given me an opportunity to fly the flag for young girls and women, to be more than just somebody's wife and somebody's girlfriend.
• Because of my white silver hair [playing Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones (2011) ], I rarely get recognized in public. But once, when I was in L.A. in America, a couple of weeks ago and I was in a lift [elevator] in a department store while shopping and the doors opened and this woman stood there, looked at me and just went, Khaleesi! and then the doors closed! So, that was mental and bizarre and rarely happens, but when it does it's normally on that kind of crazy scale.
• I looked around one stage school when I was maybe nine. It just scared the bejesus out of me. I was incredibly open, and the girls seemed fierce and determined.
• Game of Thrones (2011) - $300,000 per episode (Season 5 & 6)
• Game of Thrones (2011) - $500,000 per episode (Season 7)
• Game of Thrones (2011) - $1,200,000 per episode (Season 8)

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Emilia Clarke: ‘The best place in the world is backstage at a theatre’

Ahead of her British stage debut in The Seagull, the Game of Thrones star talks about her self-doubt as the hit show took off, her decision to write about her brain aneurysms – and showing her love through baking

O n 16 March 2020, Emilia Clarke went on stage with the cast of The Seagull . Previews had started, and the actor was about to make her much-anticipated West End debut after a decade starring in some of the biggest films and TV shows imaginable. At the half-hour mark, everything stopped: the government had decreed that theatres were to shut with immediate effect. Lost and adrift, everyone huddled into a pub, which was filled with crowds from the surrounding theatres. “My lawyer from America was calling about something,” recalls Clarke now. “And she was like, ‘ Get out of the pub! ’ We had no idea of the enormity of it.”

Events, of course, got in the way. Two-and-a-bit years on, we meet at The Seagull rehearsal studios in south London, a cavernous former warehouse with a skeletal stage set up in the middle of it. Not much is known about Jamie Lloyd’s production of the classic Chekhov play, but hopefully it isn’t too much of a spoiler to say – based on a diorama sitting on a side table – that it will feature some chairs. “There are no distractions,” says Clarke. “We don’t have a samovar. There’s no linen. There aren’t any trees. No one’s in crinoline. What we’re doing could be seen as quite radical. I think it might be Marmite.”

The actor is no stranger to the divisive power of art – on which more later – but the spare and lean production marks a pronounced change from the jobs she has done since being catapulted into superstardom by Game of Thrones in 2011. Following the phenomenally successful HBO series, in which she portrayed Daenerys Targaryen, Clarke has starred alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Genisys , played Han Solo’s love interest in Solo: A Star Wars Story and dressed as an elf in Paul Feig’s Emma Thompson-scripted romcom Last Christmas . She has won a Bafta Britannia award and been nominated for numerous Emmy, Screen Actors Guild and Critics’ Choice awards; in 2019, she was one of Time’s 100 most influential people .

Today, Clarke is sitting alone in the coffee area, perched on the edge of a low sofa; she looks immaculate in a green blazer, crisp white trousers and a smattering of necklaces and gold rings, a burst of tropical colour in the otherwise drab room. She exudes the kind of understated glamour that befits a film star fronting a global skincare brand, with huge, arresting eyes that take up a significant proportion of her face. It’s the start of the third week of rehearsals, and there is understandably a hint of nervousness about anything disrupting the run: everyone tests every day, and we begin the interview with an awkward, 2020-style elbow-bump.

Theatre’s reliance on bodies in a room together feels heightened in the age of Covid. “It definitely intensifies the experience of being on stage,” says Clarke. “In stage work, it’s every cell of your body, it’s a 360 feeling. On screen, it’s so often your left eyeball, your right shoulder – it fractures you as a human.” The last time she performed on stage was in her 2013 Broadway debut, an ill-fated production of Breakfast at Tiffany’s which she has previously described as “slightly catastrophic” (the New York Times verdict : “this particular soufflé seems doomed never to rise”). But that was then. “Chalk and cheese doesn’t even sum up the differences between that play and this. I feel like I’m meant to be in this. I’m not sure I was meant to be in the other one,” she adds with a cackle, the first of many.

Clarke is personable and engaging company, her answers thoughtful and considered; there’s a seriousness about the way she thinks about her work, but there’s always a joke close to the surface, a self-deprecating aside when she feels her answers are insufficiently original. Several times during our conversation, her calm and stately intonation gives way to a funny voice or an impression (a representative sample: New Yawk stallholder, sceptical cockney, musical theatre kid, exhausted goblin). If this was an audition, you’d hire her on the spot.

Clarke has been trying to return to the stage for nearly a decade, but because of her high-wattage film choices, theatres assumed she wasn’t interested. Her agent suggested sitting down with some directors, who all jumped at the chance; one of them was Jamie Lloyd, who offered her the role of ingenue actor Nina, in an Anya Reiss adaptation that relocates The Seagull to present-day England. “Nina’s up there with Juliet – she’s a role that many actors before me have done,” says Clarke. “She’s one of the few roles Chekhov wrote who is as hopeful at the beginning as she is at the end, despite the brutal experiences she lives through. And the thing that makes her feel better is her craft, and that’s a beautiful thing for an actor – but it can feel quite meta at times, for sure.”

“It’s a very painful, very delicate play,” says Lloyd, who I speak to on the phone a few days later. “And so I thought of Emilia – I always think you never really see her ‘acting’. Whatever she does is so honest and thoughtful and true, and there’s this amazing warmth which felt appropriate for Nina.” He has just finished a rapturously received, hip-hop-inspired production of Cyrano de Bergerac starring James McAvoy, but this is very much an ensemble piece. “What I love about it is it’s not a very showy West End debut,” he says. “It’s not this big tour-de-force leading role. It’s unexpected in its quiet simplicity and precision – I think it’s brave. Sometimes people don’t realise how hard it is to dig deep and connect.”

Clarke’s British stage debut comes with an additional layer of emotional significance. Her father, Peter Clarke, was a sound designer from Wolverhampton who worked in every theatre in the West End; one of his first plays was at the Playhouse (where the play was originally going to be) and he worked for many years at the Harold Pinter theatre (where it will be this summer). Press night is two days before the anniversary of his death in 2016. “It’s in the front of my mind every day. Any aspect of my work that I can relate back to my dad, I will,” she says. “I’m gonna try not to get teary even thinking about it. It’s quite ridiculous. It’s been nearly six years. And it’s still just as – it gets more painful. People don’t tell you this about grief, but it just seems to get – not worse, but it becomes so much more present.”

When Clarke was three years old her father took her to see a musical he was working on, Show Boat ; she became enamoured with that world, and got it into her head that she would become an actor. A “classic sound designer”, her father warned her: “Are you ready to be unemployed for the rest of your life? Because that’s what it’s gonna be.” She did not listen to his advice, but his support for her never wavered. “He just really loved me. My dad gave me my mystical, magical love of the theatre. To me, the best place in the world is backstage at a theatre – backstage anywhere is where I feel most at home.”

He must have been very proud of her.

“Yeah. He was a very quiet man. A very sensitive man. But I’d like to think that he is. I think he’s gonna be with me every night.” Her eyes fill with tears. “Sorry.”

E milia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke was born in London in 1986 to Peter and Jennifer Clarke, a businesswoman. She had an idyllic childhood in Oxfordshire, getting her first lead part in a play aged five at the Squirrel school, Oxford. When she finished school, she applied to study drama but was rejected; she took a year out, waitressing and backpacking, before being accepted by Drama Centre London. Her first television role was in BBC soap Doctors , followed by TV film Triassic Attack , for which she was named a Screen International Star of Tomorrow.

Her father’s prediction was not far off: for a year, she supported herself working in a pub, a call centre and a museum, but acting roles were hard to come by. Until, in 2010, Clarke auditioned for fantasy series Game of Thrones after an expensive pilot needed to be reshot. All contenders for the role prepared two scenes: one from the beginning, when Daenerys is a meek, fearful girl, and one from the season finale, when she has become the “mother of dragons”. “Many were good at the first scene. A few were good at the second. Only Emilia made both work,” says David Benioff, co-creator, showrunner and writer of Game of Thrones (along with DB Weiss), over email. “And she made them work far better than the words on the page. It was impossible to imagine anyone else in the role: she was our one true queen. And frankly, she just has that mysterious quality that makes an actor special, that makes you want to watch them. When you find someone who matches that star quality with serious acting chops… well, you hire them.”

Her co-star Iain Glen, who played Daenerys’s adviser and companion Ser Jorah Mormont, was with Clarke from the beginning. “She was absolutely thrown in at the deep end of this mega HBO series, and it must have been really frightening,” he tells me on the phone. There was a great nervousness around the place at the start, especially among the producers. “Everyone looks back in hindsight and thinks Thrones was just such an enormous global success, but really, when we began, there was a lot of trepidation, and Emilia would have been absolutely in the sights of the powers that be as to whether she could do it or not.”

What happened next was a whirlwind. From the release of season one onwards, Game of Thrones became a bigger and bigger hit, breaking record after record , going on to win 59 Emmy awards and attracting an average of 44.2 million viewers per episode. Looking back on it now, Clarke says she only truly understood the scale of the show’s success after it ended, something she is grateful for. “I had nothing to compare it to. I was as young as they come, as wildly unaware and new as you could possibly imagine.”

From the beginning, she was plagued with self-doubt. “My only concern was, ‘I’m gonna get fired, someone’s gonna find me out. Someone’s gonna tell me I’m shit at my job and I need to go home,’” she says, her voice rising as if in a frenzy. For years, she was convinced that her character would be killed or that she would be replaced. “Emilia has no idea how good she is,” says Glen. “She really is very innocent of how wonderful she is. And that’s a lovely quality. But you have to be careful it doesn’t undo you, that it doesn’t stop you from having conviction.”

As the seasons progressed, Clarke became more assured, both of her talent and her ability to act on her own terms. She has spoken in the past about feeling pressured to do nudity from the very first episode, and then being constantly questioned about it in interviews. With the rise of intimacy coordinators and movements such as #TimesUp, she says, things are slowly changing. “There’s now at least a conversation people are able to join, and highlight if they are ever feeling not OK in a certain scenario, which was very far from the case when I was doing it.”

But, overall, she thinks about the decade she spent on the show with pride and affection. “I look back on Game of Thrones like anyone else would look back on high school. It was my entire education: it informed my understanding of the industry, I learned about press, I learned about work. It gave me my bedrock of understanding of what it means to be an actor.” Along with Glen, who was a sounding board whenever she needed advice or reassurance, Clarke made many lasting friendships. “I got my crew from there. The fondness I feel for everyone is something that will never go away. Rose Leslie is someone I speak to every week. And Kit [Harington], obviously. We’re very, very close.”

One thing that comes up again and again when speaking to Clarke’s co-stars and collaborators is how deeply she cares for those she works with. “She’s an incredibly generous, kind person,” says Glen. “It’s very easy for actors to get somewhat self-absorbed, particularly when they’re taking on such a big thing. But she was always the one who was looking after people, getting cast meals together – that really binds a group of actors.” Lloyd agrees: “She’s a very unassuming, quiet, good person. She’s the first with the boxes of doughnuts for someone’s birthday – it’s very meaningful. Most people don’t do that. She’s thinking about other people all the time, making sure everyone’s having a good time.”

W hat viewers didn’t know about Clarke, however, was what she had been dealing with behind the scenes. In March 2019, she wrote a remarkable essay in the New Yorker detailing two brain aneurysms she suffered in 2011 and 2013. “That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done,” she says, her tone sombre. “I was never going to do it. Then I realised I might be able to help someone – even if the story was gonna help two people feel better, I had to do it.” For a long time, she worried it would be dismissed as attention-seeking. “What I was slightly obsessed with was people going, ‘ Wah wah, celebrity sob story, we don’t care,’ which they would be completely within their rights to feel. But that didn’t happen, and it was just incredible. But it’s still exposing, it’s still difficult. I’ve spoken about it so much now, and yet it’s weird to have normalised an experience that was so hard.”

In 2019 Clarke, who is an ambassador for the Royal College of Nursing, founded SameYou , a charity that supports the recovery of brain injury and stroke survivors. “The first thing you feel when you’ve had a brain injury is that you are no longer yourself,” she says. “And that is the single scariest thing that could possibly happen, because you can’t escape yourself.” After the first of two life-saving surgeries, for a week Clarke suffered from aphasia, a condition that impairs speech and the ability to recollect words; at one point she was unable to remember her own name. “I thought the bit in my brain that had gone was my ability to act. That was the thing I was most worried about. If it was, then I got it back – I think,” she deadpans, summoning a smile.

While people have been overwhelmingly supportive in the wake of her New Yorker piece, she still gets the occasional insensitive question. She leans into the dictaphone, enunciating emphatically: “Just as a heads up? With anyone who has had a brain injury – don’t make a ‘Eugh’ face,” – she mimes a pitying worried face – “and don’t ask them if they’re OK. That is the most insulting thing you can say. If they’re stood there talking to you, what do you think?” She quickly caveats that this is understandable, given that brain injury is so rarely spoken about. “I am incredibly lucky, because I saw a scan the other day, and I’m missing about three-quarters of my brain.” She pauses. “And I’m sat here talking to you, so… apparently we don’t need very much.”

There is often a sense that, after a serious illness, a person’s priorities and sense of purpose will change. This was not the case for Clarke. “It made me very, very scared for a number of years. Very scared I was going to die all the time, like I’d cheated death and it was coming for me. But it didn’t make me feel like ‘Grab life by the balls’ in any way, shape or form. It didn’t have a profound ‘Now I can do anything’ effect.” What did do that was losing her father. “That’s the thing that made me actually understand and analyse and look at the idea of mortality and living and dying and what’s important and what’s not.”

Another thing that had a tangible effect on her was the enforced stillness of the pandemic. “I think I went into an existential crisis pit of despair. I live on my own, and it was very hard. I found it really, really difficult, as did so many people.” With the play on hold, and her film projects bumped years into the future, she was left with nothing to do for the first time in her life. She did poetry readings, charity fundraising, wrote a comic ( M.O.M.: Mother of Madness ) as well as stories she is “too scared to show anyone just yet”. But, after a lifetime of feeling like someone had duct-taped her foot to the gas pedal, she was able to focus on the here and now. She started doing yoga every morning and meditating every night (“Oh, actress does meditation, what a surprise,” she berates herself), and talked with her friends for hours on the phone.

A “massive bookworm”, she spent a lot of time reading; some of her recent favourites have been Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi , Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr and Richard Powers’s Bewilderment , as well as Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss (“My mate Lola wanted to borrow it and I’ve never been so reticent to hand a book over. I was like, ‘No, no, you don’t understand, this has got my soul inside it’”). She also became obsessed with baking, and now does a Monday bake for the cast; this week’s is a strawberry and rhubarb crumble cake. “That’s how I show my love to people. I bake them cakes.” (Her cakes are “pretty amazing”, Lloyd confirms.)

At the height of the pandemic, walking her dachshund Ted (very much a “pre-lockdown dog”, she is at pains to point out) was a lifeline. “I just didn’t see anyone because I lived on my own. Fame’s the shittest thing in the world and I don’t wish it on my worst enemy. It’s horrible. It forces you to look down all the time. So it was very liberating doing these dog walks on my own being like,” – she smiles manically – “ ‘Hello !’” She is now based in “let’s call it London, for the sake of my stalkers”, after a stint in Los Angeles, and is determined to live as close to a normal life as possible. “I made a choice many years ago, and I’ve stuck to my guns. I don’t have a security guard, I don’t not go places because I think I’m going to be recognised, I go about my daily life as if it weren’t the case.”

I remark that most news stories about her are some permutations of “Emilia Clarke goes for a walk” or “Emilia Clarke posts on Instagram” (where her 27 million followers are usually treated to Clinique or charity endorsements and pictures of Ted; she has a penchant for a dorky hashtag: #teddyturnstwo, #goodvibestooneandall).

“Completely. That’s the other thing: I’m inherently dull. I’m incredibly boring. I really live a very boring, very dull life.”

Or, you manage to keep your private life private.

“Yeah. I do have a private life. And there’s plenty that I’ve done that no one knows. The way I do that is by just doing it. I also am not a very controversial human being, boringly enough.”

One thing she is happy to discuss is the moment that stands out as the most bizarre she has experienced over the years: when Brad Pitt bid $120,000 to watch an episode of Game of Thrones with her. It was Sean Penn’s annual gala for Haiti, and she was surrounded by “creme de la creme celebrities”, and no one was bidding. And then – incredulous stage whisper – “ Brad fucking Pitt comes to my rescue! I thought I was going to spontaneously combust.” (He was outbid by Clarke’s friend, much to her chagrin.) “It was, to this day, the strangest, most glorious moment of my adult life.”

But her relationship with fame has been a complicated one. Aside from the stalkers, she has been woken up on a flight for a selfie, and was once asked for one while in the middle of a panic attack , after which she implemented a no-selfies rule. What she misses most is the ability to have a conversation with a stranger on an equal footing. “I’ve really struggled with it, because I like talking to people.” She tells a story about walking into a shop recently where the server was evidently annoyed about something, but, as soon as they saw who she was, plastered a beatific smile on their face and rushed to her assistance. “You’re like, ‘No, no, no, be in the bad mood. I’m just normal. Please, don’t.’” She clasps her hands together, her expressive eyebrows knitting diagonally upwards. “Fame has afforded me many wonderful things. But I don’t understand why anyone would want it.”

There is also the thorny question of Game of Thrones ’ infamous final season; it was roundly criticised for its rushed pacing, with many fans objecting to Daenerys’s transformation into murderous tyrant at the end. When Clarke read the script, it took her some time to come to terms with it. “It was definitely a challenge. I walked out my door, took my keys, forgot my phone and just kept walking.” But in the end, she accepted it. “I totally understand and respect why they did it. There’s a depressing reality of how it ended that actually feels based in truth, which no one wants for their favourite fantasy show. I’m not sure in what other direction she could have gone.” She now sees the extreme fan reaction as “the ultimate flattery – no matter what we did, we would have upset people because it was ending”.

She is even less fazed by the raft of one-star reviews for the likable if somewhat misguided Last Christmas . “Honestly, it boils down to – I shouldn’t be saying this, but fuck ’em. I’m not living and dying by what a reviewer I’ve never met thinks about a film or a TV show I was in.” She looks down, backtracking a little. “Of course it’s always heartbreaking when that happens, because find me an actor whose entire purpose in life isn’t to be liked.” Despite the critical panning, Last Christmas was a hit with audiences and is now a cult classic . “It’s kind of the ultimate ‘fuck you,’” she smiles. “Art is meant to divide – I’d much rather do something that people either loved or hated than were like, [Larry David voice] ‘Eh – sure, didn’t really hate it, didn’t really love it.’”

Next, she’ll be in sci-fi romcom The Pod Generation alongside Chiwetel Ejiofor (“bliss, start to finish – couldn’t be more excited”), in Terry Pratchett-inspired animation The Amazing Maurice , and Marvel TV show Secret Invasion (“It’s gonna be good! That’s pretty much all I’m allowed to say”); she is set to start filming McCarthy as the wife of the Republican senator, played by Michael Shannon. There are also some projects in development with her production company, Magical Thinking Pictures, including one that is “very close”.

Around us, the sounds of the theatre are burbling up as the rest of the cast and crew start to arrive: Jamie Lloyd, fellow Thrones alumna Indira Varma. It’s time to wrap up, so I ask Clarke a final question: what advice would she give herself at the start of her career?

She answers immediately. “The only advice I would have wanted to hear: ‘It’s all going to be all right.’”

And off she goes, to unwrap her baked goods. A small crowd starts to gather around her, inspecting the contents of the Tupperware and making appreciative noises. You get the impression that this – backstage at rehearsals, surrounded by her fellow cast members, picking up where they left off two years ago – is exactly where she wants to be.

The Seagull runs at Harold Pinter theatre, London SW1, 29 June–10 September

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‘Game of Thrones’ actress Emilia Clarke in bikini on holiday: Best celeb pics of the week

Rarely seen GoT star Emilia Clarke has been spotted on a bikini-clad holiday in Italy. These are news.com.au’s best celeb pics this week.

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Usually only photographed on the red carpet or the odd pic on Instagram, new photos of Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke in a bikini have surfaced while holidaying in Italy.

The British star was seen wearing a navy and white striped string bikini as she enjoyed a boat trip with pals and a swim during the trip.

Most famous for playing Daenerys Targaryen in the long-running series , she was seen taking a dip with a group of friends as they toured around the coastal caves in the Italian seaside town of Positano.

Only last week Harry Potter star Emma Watson was pictured enjoying the warm weather in the same spot.

Ben Affleck and girlfriend Ana de Armas still can’t keep their hands off each other - they were spotted taking their masks off for a kiss during a photo shoot break in Malibu.

RELATED: Difference between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s isolation lives

Leo’s been enjoying the beach, his holiday and his life - he was spotted with girlfriend Camilla Morrone while on holiday this week.

Kendall Jenner wore this midriff baring top as she enjoyed the warm weather in LA.

What a surprise - Bella Hadid’s also baring her midriff in NYC.

Oh and what do we have here? It’s another model showing off her perfectly toned abs - Emily Ratajkowski was photographed while grabbing a take away meal in the Hamptons.

Oh come on, not another one? Jennifer Lopez shows off the results of her daily gym workouts in this cut off top, also as she heads to lunch.

Kylie Jenner posted a photo of herself looking half asleep as a thankyou to Balmain designer Oliver Rousteing for gifting her this dress on her 23rd birthday.

Dolph Lundgren got out his very tanned and oiled up 62-year-old rig while enjoying a day at the beach with his 24-year-old Norwegian fiancee Emma Krokdal.

Serena Williams was looking super fit while playing older sister Venus at a tennis tournament in Kentucky.

Cute dog of the week award goes to Scout Willis’ little dreamboat, who was hitching a ride in this dog wrap.

Chrissy Teigen was spotted shopping in LA this week after earlier revealing she’s expecting her third baby with husband John Legend.

Jackass prankster Steve-O was out promoting a new show this week, and of course that meant he gaffa taped himself to a billboard in LA .

Kim Kardashian shared this pic with her daughter Chicago on Instagram, while earlier this week she was pictured in Miami after a holiday in the Dominican Republic with husband Kanye West.

RELATED: Kanye West shares candid video with Kim Kardashian and North West

Kelly Osbourne shared news of her 35kg weight loss on Instagram this week, and was pictured shopping without any care that she was wearing socks and sandals.

Matt Damon was all smiles as he was photographed during a surfing session in Malibu.

Freddie Prinze Jr was seen wearing a mask that would give anyone nightmares.

UK reality star Gemma Collins was seen relaxing by the beach in this low cut white swimsuit in Mykonos, Greece.

Glamour model Katie Price won’t let two broken feet stop her from heading out on a shopping trip - she was seen being helped around UK department store Selfridges by her boyfriend Carl Woods.

RELATED: Katie Price shows off real teeth after getting veneers removed

The couple put on a united front in their first official gala portraits as King and Queen, after shaking off speculation about their marriage.

Meghan popped up in a new Instagram post to promote her friend’s initiative – but fans were distracted by something else.

The musician has revealed what he really thinks after becoming the subject of Taylor’s latest wrath.

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Emilia Clarke looks back on Game of Thrones season 1 — and ahead to the many upcoming prequels

The erstwhile Daenerys Targaryen reflects on the early days of the show 10 years later: "That first season was nonstop joy."

Emilia Clarke was fresh out of drama school, 23 years old and with only two screen roles to her name, when she was cast as Daenerys Targaryen. She spent the next decade ascending to a level of global stardom she could hardly have fathomed, as Game of Thrones became, rather unexpectedly, the biggest show on the planet. It's perhaps no surprise, then, that her memory of working on that first season is a bit of a blur.

"I honestly still look back at it and go, 'I'm so not at a point where I can retrospectively see this for what it is.' I think I'll be 90 when I can actually do that," Clarke tells EW, ahead of the 10th anniversary of the HBO series' premiere. "The experience was so enormous, and so all-consuming, and defines me at that young moment in my life. You kind of look back at it like you would high school or college. When you're young like that, you're so in the moment."

And in spite of all that came after—the many pressures of fame and exposure, her complicated feelings about Daenerys' ultimate arc, her health struggles during production—Clarke recalls those early days with unabashed fondness.

"I look back at the person who was there and go, 'You really have no idea what's coming. You have no idea what's about to hit,'" the actress says. "And it was beautiful for that. We were all very much in the moment that we were in, and very unaware as to how it was going to be received, what people were going to think, who we were going to be at the end of it. I'm going to call us kids, because we were—we were just having fun, experiencing this crazy thing. And it was joyous for that. That first season was nonstop joy, and so much fun. I look back at it with complete love."

As for looking ahead, how does Clarke feel about the massive expansion into Westeros that's currently underway at HBO?

"Godspeed, everyone! You do you, you go, Glenn Coco !" she says with a laugh. "It's just inevitable. I wish you all the best, it's gonna be whatever it will be, but of course they're doing more. You can't create something that big and not have people go, 'And? What else? This is really good! Let's do loads more!'"

She also extends good wishes to Miguel Sapochnik , the director of such standout Thrones installments as "Battle of the Bastards," "Hardhome," and "The Bells," who has been confirmed as the co-showrunner of the Targaryen-centric prequel series House of the Dragon .

"I love him completely, so I have no doubt that's gonna be an enormous success, because he's just a genius," Clarke says.

Related content:

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• Emilia Clarke improvised an entire monologue on Game of Thrones (and nobody noticed)
• Tamzin Merchant breaks silence on playing Daenerys in original Game of Thrones pilot

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Romantic Mallorca in Me Before You

This year's most popular romantic drama was filmed in Mallorca

Released in June, 'Me Before You' is based on the book by the same name which tells the story of Louisa Clark, a working-class girl who starts working as a caregiver for Will Traynor, a billionaire left paralysed. Feelings soon develop between them, with the island of Mallorca as the perfect backdrop for their love story.

In the film, the couple enjoy a beach holiday in Mauritius, but the scenes were actually filmed in Mallorca's Cala Formentor , a paradise of white sand and crystalline waters near Pollença .

The crew definitely had a great time on the Balearic island, judging by the pictures shared on Instagram by the stars of the film. Emilia Clarke, best known for her role as Danaerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, posted images of the sunny beach while they were filming, with the caption "Spain, there is no rain, and even less to complain.. about".

Sam Claflin, who played Finnick in the Hunger Games' franchise, was even more enthusiastic about Cala Formentor, saying that "This place truly was one of the most amazing places I'd ever visited. If you haven't been to Mallorca. Go. Explore. We were there for little over a week, but I want to go back. Again and again."

He later posted "We were fortunate to spend a good little portion of the filming out in Formentor, Mallorca, and what a beautiful place it was. Sun, sea, sand and smiles all round. "

We couldn't agree more!

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Emilia Clarke: Actress and mum Jenny both made MBEs

• Published 30 December 2023
• New Year Honours

Actress Emilia Clarke has said the MBEs bestowed on both her and her mother in the New Year Honours are "amazing" for raising awareness about brain injuries.

The Game of Thrones star suffered two brain haemorrhages in her 20s, then set up a charity in 2019 with mum Jenny.

They have now been made MBEs for services to people with brain injuries.

"I can say for both of us that the MBE is for the cause and the charity, and for that it's wicked. For that it's amazing," Emilia told BBC News.

"And who doesn't want to go to the palace? I've asked if I can take my dog, but apparently you can't."

The pair are believed to be the first mother and daughter to be honoured with the same award in the same honours list.

Emilia, 37, said it was "a miracle" that she was here to talk about the haemorrhages she suffered in 2011 and 2013.

The first happened when she was at the gym just after she had finished filming season one of Game of Thrones, and left her fighting for her life.

But she said she discovered there was inadequate support and rehabilitation after leaving hospital.

"In hospital, every day you're told you're going to die. Every day you're watched like a hawk, especially in a brain ward. You're woken up every two hours. It's this high-stakes scenario. And then three weeks to a month later, you're let out."

She was so afraid of being discharged that she "found a reason" to go back to hospital the next day, she said.

• New Year Honours 2024: Michael Eavis and Jilly Cooper on list

"I was fine, but I was so terrified to suddenly be at home, and I was at home with a loving family. That's not [the same for] everyone, and the fear that you're left with…

"I had this incredible nurse, but I was one of 400 patients that she had. She couldn't give me more than half an hour every three weeks. This is a day-to-day experience of living after a brain injury.

"Then when I had my second brain haemorrhage, I was like, I've got to do something big. Looking at the fact that I've survived two of these with no repercussions - I'm here for a reason, let me do something about it.

"That was when we started circling around the idea of creating a charity."

'People feel ashamed'

The pair set up SameYou, with Jenny - who has also previously had brain surgery to remove an aneurysm - as chief executive.

"We realised that very few people had access to long enough rehabilitation or early enough rehabilitation," Jenny said.

"You are expected to get better after a certain period, and that, sadly, is not the reality for the majority of people. Even if you have a very mild brain injury, it's a really major trauma."

Support for brain conditions is a long way behind that for some diseases, and "brain injury and recovery need to be taken much more seriously" - including by the government, she said.

SameYou has funded projects like a trial of pioneering online neurorehabilitation called NROL, in Lancashire, as well as work with University College London and the Royal College of Nursing Foundation.

Emilia, who is also known for films including Terminator Genisys, Me Before You and Solo: A Star Wars Story, said she was proud of raising awareness after initially keeping her experiences out of the public eye.

"I kept my story a secret. I didn't want to tell anyone. I didn't want it to be a celebrity sob story," she said.

"The single most important thing that we've done is at least build the first brick of a foundation of a platform to talk about this, because it's a shameful thing - people feel ashamed when they've got it.

"You can't comprehend it... and you can't explain to someone what the intricacies of it are.

"The second thing we're most proud of is NROL, which is our online rehabilitation that we began in Covid, and now we're trying to get the funds to roll out for it to be more accessible, because the feedback and the results have been phenomenal."

Emilia said she has "no major repercussions" from her haemorrhages, but does feel some effects, including fatigue.

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July 2019: Emilia Clarke speaks of the mental health struggles of young stroke survivors

"I work through it and it's fine. It's unquantifiable and undiagnosable but the fatigue is a real thing," she said.

"And I'm inclined to say that anxiety is more prevalent within me since the brain haemorrhage, but what else happened when I got a brain haemorrhage was I started Game of Thrones, so anxiety was going to happen any which way.

"There are times when someone will say: 'Do you remember that party you went to you when you were 19?', and I'll go, 'I have no recollection of that whatsoever'. Maybe that's a bit that's gone in my brain. I have those conversations in my head daily.

"But in the grand scheme of things, what I went through and the fact that I'm here talking to you is nothing short of a miracle.

"That can happen, but it's not the norm for people with brain injury, so I feel it's my duty to be able to use my vaguely working brain to talk about it."

The actress also paid tribute to her mother in light of the news about their becoming MBEs.

"The most important thing is that my mum got it," she said. "The fact that it's us together is very sweet and lovely, but the reason why the charity really exists is because of all the work that my mum does."

Jenny said: "The great honour that we've both been awarded, I don't see it at all for us, because we're just starting off on this journey to try and raise awareness, but [it is for] the tens of thousands of people that have written to us and the millions of people around the world that don't have a voice."

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• Game of Thrones
• Brain injury

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• Published 21 March 2019

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Emilia Clarke

Actor, Producer

Born October 23, 1986 in London, England, UK

British actress Emilia Clarke was born in London and grew up in Oxfordshire, England. Her father was a theatre sound engineer and her mother is a businesswoman. Her father was working on a theatre production of "Show Boat" and her mother took her along to the performance. This is when, at the age of 3, her passion for acting began. From 2000 to 2005, she attended St. Edward's School of Oxford, where she appeared in two school plays. She went on to study acting at the prestigious Drama Centre London, where she took part in 10 plays. During this time, Emilia first appeared on television with a guest role in the BBC soap opera Doctors (2000). In 2010, after graduating from the Drama Centre London, Emilia got her first film role in the television movie Triassic Attack (2010). In 2011, her breakthrough role came in when she replaced fellow newcomer Tamzin Merchant on Game of Thrones (2011) after the filming of the original pilot episode. From March to April 2013, she played Holly Golightly in a Broadway production of "Breakfast at Tiffany's". She played Sarah Connor in Terminator Genisys (2015), opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jai Courtney and Jason Clarke. She played the lead role of Louisa Clark in the romantic comedy blockbuster Me Before You (2016) and went on to star in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) as Qi'ra. Since her rise to prominence, Emilia has contributed to various charitable organisations. In 2018, she was named as the ambassador to the Royal College of Nursing because of her efforts in raising awareness about the working condition of the nurses in the UK. In 2019, she was named as the first ambassador for the global Nursing Now campaign. In 2019, in a personal essay published in The New Yorker, Emilia revealed that she had suffered from two life threatening brain aneurysms in 2011 and 2013. She launched her own charity SameYou in 2019, which aims to broaden neurorehabilitation access for young people after a brain injury or stroke.

British actress Emilia Clarke was born in London and grew up in Oxfordshire, England. Her father was a theatre sound engineer and her mother is a businesswoman. Her father was working on a theatre production of "Show Boat" and her mother took her along to the performance. This is when, at the age of 3, her passion for acting began. From 2000 to 2005, she attended St. Edward's School of Oxford, where she appeared in two school plays. She went on to study acting at the prestigious Drama Centre London, where she took part in 10 plays. During this time, Emilia first appeared on television with a guest role in the BBC soap opera Doctors (2000).

In 2010, after graduating from the Drama Centre London, Emilia got her first film role in the television movie Triassic Attack (2010). In 2011, her breakthrough role came in when she replaced fellow newcomer Tamzin Merchant on Game of Thrones (2011) after the filming of the original pilot episode. From March to April 2013, she played Holly Golightly in a Broadway production of "Breakfast at Tiffany's". She played Sarah Connor in Terminator Genisys (2015), opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jai Courtney and Jason Clarke. She played the lead role of Louisa Clark in the romantic comedy blockbuster Me Before You (2016) and went on to star in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) as Qi'ra.

Since her rise to prominence, Emilia has contributed to various charitable organisations. In 2018, she was named as the ambassador to the Royal College of Nursing because of her efforts in raising awareness about the working condition of the nurses in the UK. In 2019, she was named as the first ambassador for the global Nursing Now campaign. In 2019, in a personal essay published in The New Yorker, Emilia revealed that she had suffered from two life threatening brain aneurysms in 2011 and 2013. She launched her own charity SameYou in 2019, which aims to broaden neurorehabilitation access for young people after a brain injury or stroke.

Filmography

Connections.

Emma Thompson

David Benioff

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NOT FOR CHARTER *

This Yacht is not for Charter*

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EMILIA yacht NOT for charter*

34.14m  /  112' | westport yachts | 2002 / 2023.

Owner & Guests

Cabin Configuration

• Previous Yacht

Special Features:

• Flybridge Jacuzzi and bar
• Shallow draft for reaching waters other yachts cant
• Full-beam master suite with Jacuzzi tub
• Timeless appeal and styling
• State-of-the-art entertainment systems

The 34.14m/112' motor yacht 'Emilia' (ex. Joan's Ark) was built by Westport Yachts in the United States at their Westport shipyard. Her interior is styled by design house Pacific Custom Interiors and she was completed in 2002. This luxury vessel's exterior design is the work of Gregory Marshall and she was last refitted in 2023.

Guest Accommodation

Emilia has been designed to comfortably accommodate up to 4 guests in 3 suites. She is also capable of carrying up to 7 crew onboard to ensure a relaxed luxury yacht experience.

Range & Performance

Built with a GRP hull and GRP superstructure, with teak decks, she benefits from a semi-displacement hull to provide exceptional seakeeping and impressive speeds. Powered by twin diesel MTU (16V2000 DDEC) 1,800hp engines, she comfortably cruises at 20 knots, reaches a maximum speed of 23 knots. Her water tanks store around 3,785 Litres of fresh water.

*Charter Emilia Motor Yacht

Motor yacht Emilia is currently not believed to be available for private Charter. To view similar yachts for charter , or contact your Yacht Charter Broker for information about renting a luxury charter yacht.

Emilia Yacht Owner, Captain or marketing company

'Yacht Charter Fleet' is a free information service, if your yacht is available for charter please contact us with details and photos and we will update our records.

Emilia Photos

Emilia Awards & Nominations

• The World Superyacht Awards 2024 Refitted Yachts Nomination

NOTE to U.S. Customs & Border Protection

Specification

M/Y Emilia

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