Emilia Clarke says she believed she had cheated death after two brain aneurysms

Emilia Clarke said she believed she had cheated death and was meant to die after surviving two life-threatening brain aneurysms while filming HBO's Game of Thrones.

Clarke, now 39, collapsed at a gym in London at age 24 right after filming wrapped for season one in 2011. She described the first aneurysm as feeling like an elastic band snapping around her brain.

She crawled to the bathroom to vomit and recalled thinking she was being brain damaged. Clarke said she focused on convincing the show's creators she would recover in time to film.

"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," she said on the "How to Fail with Elizabeth Day" podcast.

Clarke told showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss about the first aneurysm but kept the emergency private from others. Two years later, a scheduled surgery went wrong and caused a second brain hemorrhage.

Doctors had found another aneurysm during treatment for the first one. Clarke said her parents waited while doctors came down every half hour and told them they thought she would die.

She said she shut down emotionally after the second hemorrhage and became very sensitive. In 2022, Clarke revealed she was missing parts of her brain after both injuries.