emilia clarke laughs about missing part of her brain after aneurysms

“game of thrones” actress emilia clarke is opening up about what her life looks like since she suffered two aneurysms in her 20s.

“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,” clarke, now 35, told bbc news’s sunday morning in a video interview.

emilia clarke learned of aneurysms between seasons of game of thrones

in 2011, just after she finished filming the first season of the hit hbo series game of thrones , clarke was working out with a trainer when she started to experience what felt like “an elastic band … squeezing my brain,” she wrote in a 2019 essay for the new yorker. “at some level, i knew what was happening: my brain was damaged.” she was rushed to the hospital, where an mri determined that she had a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a stroke caused by bleeding in the space around the brain. this usually happens when an aneurysm — a weakened part of a blood vessel — bursts and leaks, johns hopkins medicine explains . the high volume of blood puts pressure on the brain, which can damage its cells.

clarke had emergency brain surgery to seal off the aneurysm. “when i woke, the pain was unbearable. i had no idea where i was. my field of vision was constricted,” she wrote. she couldn’t remember her name, and was horrified when she started speaking nonsense words she didn’t understand. it turned out clarke had aphasia, a brain condition that affects the part of the brain that controls language and speech. it can make speaking, writing, and sometimes understanding language very difficult. it is also an extremely frustrating condition both for the people who have it and the people around them: aphasia patients will sometimes know what they want to say, but they can’t express it. (it’s the same condition bruce willis’s family announced he had earlier this year.)

clarke required surgery to treat the second aneurysm

eventually, though, she did recover — and her health is now better than anyone expected. “in the years since my second surgery i have healed beyond my most unreasonable hopes. i am now at a hundred per cent,” clarke wrote in 2019. she has since started a charity called sameyou for people recovering from brain injury.