Emilia Clarke’s Brain Aneurysm

Emilia Clarke filmed battle scenes for Game of Thrones, but in 2019, she published an essay in The New Yorker titled “A Battle for My Life.”

Emilia Clarke experienced severe headaches while at the gym, leading her to say, “I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill.” She described the pain as “shooting, stabbing, constricting pain” that was worsening. At some level, she understood the gravity of the situation: her brain was damaged.

She was taken to the hospital for 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,” the Emmy nominee added. “I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture.”

Emilia underwent immediate surgery to seal the aneurysm, describing the pain as “unbearable.” During her recovery, she experienced aphasia and was “muttering nonsense.”

A week later, “the aphasia passed,” Emilia noted, and she left the hospital a month after being admitted.

During a 2013 brain scan, she discovered that a growth had “doubled in size” and that she required surgery again.

“When they woke me, I was screaming in pain,” she recounted. “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.”

Thankfully, Emilia shared that she’s now “at a hundred per cent.”