Emilia Clarke: ‘I’m fantastically lucky to still be alive’

I like her manners — soft, but somehow resolute. Determination is also read in her clear eyes of an insidious iridescent color — both green, and blue, and brown at the same time. Hardness — in the rounded-smooth features of a charming, somewhat doll-like face. Calm confidence — in the movements. And the dimples that appear on her cheeks when she smiles are also unambiguous — definitely optimistic.

The whole image of Amy, and she asks to call her that way (“shortly and without pathos”), is life-affirming. She is one of those who overcomes, who does not give up, who finds a way out, and if necessary, an entrance. She has the biggest smile in the world, small, unmanicured hands, eyebrows that never knew tweezers, and clothes that seem childish — not least because of her petiteness, of course: flared jeans, a pink flowered blouse and blue ballet flats with sentimental bows.

She sighs childishly as she surveys the wonders of the fife-o-clock served buffet-style at the Beverly Hills hotel’s British restaurant—all those dried fruit and candied fruit scones, heavy clotted cream, elegantly tiny sandwiches, and luscious jams. “Oh, I can’t even look at this,” Amy laments. “I get fat just looking at a croissant!” And then confidently adds: “But it doesn’t matter.”

Here the journalist should ask, what is the trouble for Amy. But I already know, of course. After all, she recently told the world what she had experienced and what she had been hiding for years. You can’t get away from this gloomy topic … Amy strangely disagrees with me about this definition.

Emilia Clarke: Gloomy? Why gloomy? On the contrary, it is a very positive topic. What happened and experienced made me realize how happy I am, how lucky I am. And all this, mind you, does not depend at all on who I am, what I am, whether I am talented. It’s like a mother’s love — it’s also unconditional. Here I am left alive without any conditions. Although a third of all who survived a ruptured brain aneurysm die immediately. Half — after some time. Too many remain disabled. And I survived it twice, but now I’m fine. And I feel this maternal love that came to me from somewhere. I don’t know where.

Psychologies: Did it make you feel like you were chosen? After all, those who are miraculously saved have such a temptation, such a psychological …

Curvature? Yes, the psychologist warned me. And also about the fact that such people subsequently live with the feeling that the sea is knee-deep to them and the Universe is at their feet. But you know, my experience is different. I didn’t escape, they saved me … That woman from the same sports club with me, who heard strange sounds from the toilet stall — when I started to feel sick, because my head hurt terribly, I had a feeling of brain explosion, literally …

Doctors from Whitington Hospital, where I was brought from the sports club … They instantly diagnosed a ruptured aneurysm of one of the vessels and a subarachnoid hemorrhage — a type of stroke when blood accumulates between the membranes of the brain. The surgeons at the National Center for Neurology in London, who performed a total of three operations on me, one of them on the open brain…

Mom, who held my hand for five months, it seems that she has never held my hand so much in all my childhood. A dad who told funny stories while I was in a terrible depression after the second operation. My best friend Lola, who came to my hospital when I had aphasia — memory lapses, speech disorganization — to train my memory together on a volume of Shakespeare, I once knew him almost by heart.

My brother — he is only a year and a half older than me — who, after my first operation, said so decisively and even viciously, and did not notice how ridiculous it sounds: «If you do not recover, I will kill you!» And nurses with their small salary and great kindness…

I didn’t get saved. They saved me — people, and very specific. Not God, not providence, not luck. People. I’m really fantastically lucky. Not everyone is so lucky. And I’m alive. Although sometimes I wanted to die. After the first operation, when I developed aphasia. The nurse, trying to find out the condition of the patient, asked me my full name. My passport name is Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clark. I did not remember the whole name … But my whole life was connected with memory and speech, everything that I wanted to be and had already begun to become!

This happened after the first season of Game of Thrones was filmed. I was 24 years old. But I wanted to die … I tried to imagine a future life, and it … was not worth living for me. I am an actress and I have to remember my role. And I need peripheral vision on the set and on stage … More than once later I experienced panic, horror. I just wanted to be unplugged. For this to end…

When the minimally invasive operation to neutralize the second aneurysm was extremely unsuccessful — I woke up after anesthesia with terrible pain, because bleeding began and it was necessary to open the skull … When everything seemed to have already ended successfully and we were with Game of Thrones at Comic Con ‘ e, the biggest event in the comics and fantasy industry, and I nearly fainted from a headache…

And you did not consider the possibility of living on, but not being an actress?

What do you! I just didn’t think about it — for me it’s simply unthinkable! We lived in Oxford, dad was a sound engineer, he worked in London, in various theaters, he made famous musicals in the West End — Chicago, West Side Story. And he took me to rehearsals. And there — the smell of dust and makeup, the rumble on the grate, whispering from the darkness … A world where adults create miracles.

When I was four, my dad took my brother and me to the musical Show Boat, about a floating theater troupe that roams the Mississippi. I was a noisy and naughty child, but for those two hours I sat motionless, and when the applause began, I jumped into a chair and applauded, bouncing on it.

And that’s it. From that time on, I only wanted to be an actress. Nothing else was even considered. As a person intimately familiar with this world, my father was not delighted with my decision. Actors are overwhelmingly unemployed neurotics, he insisted. And my mother — she always worked in business and somehow guessed that I was not in this part — convinced me after school and children’s productions to take a break for a year. That is, do not enter the theater right away, look around.

And I worked as a waitress for a year, backpacking through Thailand and India. And yet she entered the London Center for Dramatic Art, where she learned a lot about herself. The roles of the heroines invariably went to tall, thin, flexible, unbearably fair-haired classmates. And for me — the role of a Jewish mother in «Rise and shine.» It’s a pity you didn’t hear me speak as an aunt from the Bronx! I also played old ladies. And gnomes at children’s matinees.

And no one could have foreseen that you were destined to be Snow White! I mean Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones.

And first of all, me! I then wanted to play in something significant, important. Roles to remember. And so with the gnomes tied up. But I had to pay for an apartment in London, and I worked in a call center, in a theater wardrobe, leading in the «Store on the sofa», it’s a total horror. And a caretaker in a third-rate museum. My main function was to tell visitors: «The toilet is straight ahead and to the right.»

But one day my agent called: “Quit your part-time jobs, come to the studio tomorrow and record two scenes on video. It’s a casting call for a big HBO series, you should try it, text in the mail.» I’m reading about a tall, thin, beautiful blonde. I laugh out loud, I call the agent: “Gene, are you sure that I need to come? Do you even remember what I look like, do you confuse it with any of your clients? I’m 157 cm tall, I’m plump and almost a brunette.

She consoled me: the “pilot” with a tall blonde channel has already turned the authors over, now the one who will play, and not who looks like, will do. And I was called to the final audition in Los Angeles.

While I was waiting for my turn, I tried not to look around: tall, flexible, inexpressibly beautiful blondes constantly walked by. I played three scenes and saw reflection on the faces of the bosses. She asked: is there anything else I can do? David (David Benioff — one of the creators of the Game of Thrones. — Approx. ed.) suggested: «Will you dance?» Good thing I didn’t ask you to sing…

The last time I sang in public was at the age of 10, when my dad, under my pressure, took me to audition for the musical «Girl for Goodbye» in the West End. I still remember how during my performance he covered his face with his hands! And dancing is easier. And I incendiary performed the dance of chickens, with which I performed at matinees. I think the producers experienced a culture shock. And I was shocked when I was approved.

You were a debutante and experienced tremendous success. How did he change you?

You see, in this profession, vanity comes with work. When you are busy, when you are needed. It is a temptation to constantly look at yourself through the eyes of the public and the press. It’s almost maniacal to get hung up on how you look… I’ll be honest, I had a hard time getting through the discussion of my nude scenes – both in interviews and on the Internet. Do you remember that the most significant scene of Daenerys in the first season is the one in which she is completely naked? And your colleagues made comments to me like: you play a strong woman, but you exploit your sexuality… It hurt me.

But did you answer them?

Yeah. Something like this: “How many men do I need to kill for you to consider me a feminist?” But the internet was worse. Such comments … I even hate to think about them. That I’m fat is also the softest thing. Even worse were the fantasies about me, which male viewers shamelessly stated in their comments … And then the second aneurysm. Filming the second season was just torment. I concentrated while working, but every day, every shift, every minute I thought I was dying. I felt so desperate…

If I’ve changed, that’s the only reason. In general, I joked that aneurysms had a strong effect on me — they beat off a good taste in men. I laughed it off. But seriously, now I don’t care how I look in someone’s eyes. Including men’s. I cheated death twice, now it only matters how I use life.

Is that why you now decide to talk about your experience? After all, for all these years, the news that could have taken the front pages of the tabloids miraculously did not seep into them.

Yes, because now I can help people who have gone through the same thing. And to engage in the SameYou Charity (“All the same you”) fund, it helps people who have suffered brain injuries and supports research in this area.

But to be silent for 7 years and speak only before the widely announced show of the last season of «Games …». Why? A cynic would say: a good marketing ploy.

And don’t be a cynic. Being a cynic is generally stupid. Does Game of Thrones need any more publicity? But I was silent, yes, because of her — I didn’t want to harm the project, to attract attention to myself.

You said now you don’t care how you look in men’s eyes. But it’s so strange to hear from a woman 32 years old! Especially since your past is connected with such brilliant men as Richard Madden and Seth MacFarlane (Madden is a British actor, Clarke’s colleague on Game of Thrones; MacFarlane is an actor, producer and playwright, now one of the leading comedians in the United States) …

As a child who grew up with happy parents, in a happy family, of course, I can’t imagine that I don’t have my own. But somehow this is always ahead of me, in the future … It just turns out that … work is my personal life. And then… When Seth and I ended our relationship, I made a personal rule. That is, she borrowed from one wonderful make-up artist. She also has an abbreviation for him — BNA. What does «no more actors» mean.

Why?

Because relationships fall apart for an idiotic, stupid, criminal reason. In our business, this is called a «schedule conflict» — two actors always have different work and filming schedules, sometimes on different continents. And I want my relationship to depend not on soulless schemes, but solely on me and the one I love.

And it’s not that the child of happy parents has too high requirements for a partner and relationships?

This is a separate and painful topic for me … My dad died three years ago from cancer. We were very close, he was not an old man. I thought he would stay by my side for many years to come. And he is not. I was terribly afraid of his death. I went to his hospital from the filming of «Game …» — from Hungary, from Iceland, from Italy. There and back, two hours in the hospital — only a day. It was as if I tried with these efforts, with flights, to persuade him to stay …

I can’t come to terms with his death, and apparently I never will. I talk to him alone, repeating his aphorisms, for which he was a master. For example: «do not trust those who have a TV in the house that takes up more space than books.» Probably, I can unconsciously look for a person of his qualities, his kindness, his degree of understanding of me. And of course I won’t find it — it’s impossible. So I try to become aware of the unconscious and, if it is destructive, to overcome it.

You see, I went through a lot of brain problems. I know for sure: brains mean a lot.

EMILIA CLARK’S THREE FAVORITE THINGS

Playing in the theater

Emilia Clarke, who was made famous by the series and who played in the blockbusters Han Solo: Star Wars. Stories «and» Terminator: Genesis «, dreams of … playing in the theater. So far, her experience is small: from the big productions — only «Breakfast at Tiffany’s» based on the play by Truman Capote on Broadway. The performance was recognized by critics and the public as not particularly successful, but … “But the theater is my love! — the actress admits. — Because the theater is not about the artist, not about the director. It’s about the audience! In it, the main character is she, your contact with her, the exchange of energy between the stage and the audience.

Vesti Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia)

Clarke has almost 20 million followers on Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia). And she willingly shares with them joys, and sometimes secrets. Yes, these photos with a little boy and comments like “I tried so hard to put my godson to sleep that I fell asleep before him” are touching. But two shadows on the white sand, merged into a kiss, with the caption “This birthday will definitely be remembered by me” — there was clearly a hint of something secret. But since exactly the same photo appeared on the page of director Charlie McDowell, the son of the famous artist Malcolm McDowell, the conclusion suggested itself. Guess which one?

play music

“If you type “Clark + flute” in a Google search, the answer will be unequivocal: Ian Clark is a famous British flutist and composer. But I’m also Clark, and I love to play the flute just as much,” Emilia sighs. — Only, unfortunately, I’m not famous, but a secret, conspiratorial flutist. As a child, I learned to play both the piano and the guitar. And in principle, I even know how. But most of all I love — on the flute. But no one knows it’s me. To think that I’m listening to a recording. And there someone is desperately fake!