Emilia Clarke opens up about suffering 2 brain hemorrhages in her 20s

Emilia Clarke was honoured at the inaugural Variety "Power of Women: London" event on Wednesday. (Kate Green/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

For years, Hollywood star Emilia Clarke didn’t speak publicly about suffering two brain hemorrhages in her twenties. “It still took years for me to grapple with my truth,” she said in a speech Wednesday after she was honored at Variety’s Power of Women London event.

When Clarke shared her experience in 2019, “we were overwhelmed by the response,” she added as she opened up about the long-term consequences of her ordeal.

“In 2011, I didn’t want anyone to know about my brain bleeds,” said the British actress, who is best known for playing Daenerys Targaryen in “Game of Thrones. “I was ashamed and overwhelmed by a diagnosis I didn’t understand.”

“Fifteen years after my first bleed, I have the hindsight to see how difficult that time truly was,” she added.

After suffering two hemorrhages – one in 2011 and another in 2013 – she says she “never had the chance to reflect on what my two brain traumas had done to me because I could walk, talk, be myself, remember my lines and was back on camera within weeks of both brain injuries.”

Clarke, 39, said she tried to downplay other consequences. “I ignored what was going on with my hormones, or rather my lack of them, my extreme fatigue that no one else I knew in their 20s suffered,” she said.

“What about my anxiety? Surely that is normal working in our image obsessed industry? Breaking a rib after filming a sex scene? Well, maybe that was his fault. But sometimes even blacking out after long night shoots? The pain all over my body? I didn’t even think I should find out why. I just put it down as stress and my non-stop work schedule, that I wasn’t too good at coping with. I thought I had been fixed. So did my doctors. None of us could see the pattern, so I just blamed myself.”

“It never occurred to me that maybe the problem wasn’t me…that it was because brain injury is extraordinarily complex, and we’re still only beginning to understand the impact it can have long after you’ve supposedly recovered.”

As she grappled with the complexities of her own recovery, she launched a brain recovery charity “SameYou,” the name of which is a nod to returning to the self you were before the brain trauma.

“Today we have tens of thousands of survivors in our community saying essentially the same thing: the journey to healing feels like falling off the edge of a cliff without anyone there to catch you,” she said.

As for her own recovery, Clarke said she now has the “energy and positivity I had in my twenties” after working with neuroscientist David Putrino at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.

“When you think about who you are – your personality, your intellect, your humor, your memories, your excellent taste – where do they live? Your mind.”

“And when that fails you, it can shake your trust in yourself. It can leave you frightened and convinced you’ll never be who you were again,” she said.

By Issy Ronald, CNN