Emilia Clarke revealed she is missing “quite a bit” of her brain after suffering two aneurysms during her time on “Game of Thrones.”
“The amount of my brain that is no longer usable — it’s remarkable that I am able to speak, sometimes articulately, and live my life completely normally with absolutely no repercussions,” the 35-year-old actress said on BBC One’s “Sunday Morning.”
“I am in the really, really, really small minority of people that can survive that,” she added. “There’s quite a bit missing! Which always makes me laugh. Because strokes, basically, as soon as any part of your brain doesn’t get blood for a second, it’s gone. And so the blood finds a different route to get around, but then whatever bit it’s missing is therefore gone.”
Just after she finished filming the critically acclaimed HBO show’s first season in 2011, Clarke suffered her first aneurysm, which also led to a stroke and a subarachnoid hemorrhage.
Due to the health scare, the “Solo: A Star Wars Story” star had to undergo brain surgery that resulted in her being unable to remember her name.
“I was suffering from a condition called aphasia, a consequence of the trauma my brain had suffered,” she wrote in a 2019 essay for The New Yorker.
“In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug,” she continued. “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.”
After fighting through these dark moments, Clarke was able to come out on the other side since the aphasia was temporary.
“I was sent back to the ICU, and after about a week, the aphasia passed,” she wrote. “I was able to speak.”
But in 2013, the “Me Before You” star was faced with another aneurism that needed to be treated through surgery.
Although she was “promised a relatively simple operation,” Clarke said the second was even more harrowing than the first.
“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,” she recalled in the essay.
After making a full recovery, Clarke decided to use her platform to help others who suffered similar experiences. She launched the charity SameYou to raise money for brain injury survivors and their loved ones.
