Emilia Clarke believed she had 'cheated death': Here's why

Emilia Clarke, while shooting the hit HBO drama Game of Thrones, believed she had "cheated death".

She had two brain hemorrhages at the time.

Appearing on the How To Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast, Clarke says, “I was just convinced that I had cheated death and I was meant to die. Every day, that's all I could think about.”

She suffered her first brain hemorrhage while working out at a gym in London.

“The closest thing to describe it is imagining an elastic band just snapping around your brain,” she shares. “This insane pressure"

“In that moment, I knew I was being brain damaged,” the actress recalls.

At the time, Clarke was cast in Game of Thrones.

However, the sudden deterioration in the actress's health kicked in immediately about the fear of her role in the show.

“I was so ashamed that this thing had happened and that the people who had employed me might see me as weak or see me as something that could be broken."

Then, years later, a second hemorrhage hit.

Clarke, at the time, was cast in a Broadway show. But this time, the actress suffered emotionally more.

“The biggest thing that happened to me with the second brain hemorrhage was I shut down emotionally,” she recounts.

Clarke, following her terrible experiences, founded the brain injury recovery charity SameYou in 2019.