Overview
- In a candid interview on How To Fail with Elizabeth Day, Clarke detailed two brain aneurysms and said she kept the illness from HBO, telling only the showrunners.
- She suffered the first hemorrhage in 2011 soon after filming season one of Game of Thrones and needed emergency surgery that briefly affected her speech.
- The second aneurysm enlarged in 2013, a planned procedure in New York went wrong, doctors opened her skull in an emergency, and they warned her parents she might die.
- Clarke says she emotionally shut down for years and lived with daily fear of another bleed, even panicking over routine headaches during press events.
- Her experience later led her to co-found SameYou in 2019 to expand rehab care after brain injury, and she now has regular brain checks and says the fear has largely eased.