Emilia Clarke, of “Game of Thrones,” on Surviving Two Life-Threatening Aneurysms | The New Yorker

I grew up in Oxford and rarely gave a thought to my health. Nearly all I thought about was acting. My dad was a sound designer. He worked on productions of “West Side Story” and “Chicago” in the West End. My mother was, and is, a businesswoman, the vice-president of marketing for a global management consultancy. We weren’t wealthy, but my brother and I went to private schools. Our parents, who wanted everything for us, struggled to keep up with the fees.

I have no clear memory of when I first decided to be an actor. I’m told I was around three or four. When I went with my dad to theatres, I was entranced by backstage life: the gossip, the props, the costumes, all the urgent and whispered hubbub in the near darkness. When I was three, my father took me to see a production of “Show Boat.” Although I was ordinarily a loud and antsy child, I sat silent and rapt in the audience for more than two hours. When the curtain came down, I stood on my seat and clapped wildly over my head.

I was hooked. At home, I played a VHS tape of “My Fair Lady” so many times that it snapped from wear. I think I took the Pygmalion story as a sign of how, and with enough rehearsal and a good director, you can become someone else. I don’t think my dad was pleased when I announced that I wanted to be an actor. He knew plenty of actors and, to his mind, they were habitually neurotic and unemployed.

My school, in Oxford, the Squirrel School, was idyllic, orderly, and sweet. When I was five, I got the lead part in a play. When it came time to take the stage and deliver my lines, though, I forgot everything. I just stood there, center stage, stock-still, taking it all in. In the front row, the teachers were trying to help by mouthing my lines. But I just stood there, with no fear, very calm. It’s a state of mind that has carried me throughout my career. These days, I can be on a red carpet with a thousand cameras clicking away and I’m unfazed. Of course, put me at a dinner party with six people and that’s another matter.

With time, I got better at acting. I even remembered my lines. But I was hardly a prodigy. When I was ten, my dad took me to an audition in the West End for a production of Neil Simon’s “The Goodbye Girl.” When I got inside, I realized that every girl trying out for this part was singing a song from “Cats.” The only thing I could come up with was an English folk song, “Donkey Riding.” After listening rather patiently, someone asked, “How about something more . . . contemporary?” I sang the Spice Girls hit “Wannabe.” My dad’s hands practically covered his face. I didn’t get the part, and I think it was a blessing. My dad said, “It would have been hard reading anything bad about you in the paper.”

But I kept at it. In school productions, I played Anita in “West Side Story,” Abigail in “The Crucible,” one of the witches in “Macbeth,” Viola in “Twelfth Night.” After secondary school, I took a gap year, during which I worked as a waitress and went backpacking in Asia. Then I started classes at the Drama Centre London to pursue my B.A. As fledgling actors, we studied everything from “The Cherry Orchard” to “The Wire.” I didn’t get the ingénue parts. Those went to the tall, willowy, impossibly blond girls. I got cast as a Jewish mother in “Awake and Sing!” You should hear my Bronx accent.

After graduation, I made myself a promise: for one year, I would take only roles with some promise. I made the rent working in a pub, in a call center, and at an obscure museum, telling people that “the loos are just to the right.” Seconds lasted days. But I was determined: one year of no bad productions, no plays above a bar.

In the spring of 2010, my agent called to say that auditions were being held in London for a new HBO series. The pilot for “Game of Thrones” had been flawed and they wanted to re-cast, among other roles, Daenerys. The part called for an otherworldly, bleached-blond woman of mystery. I’m a short, dark-haired, curvy Brit. Whatever. To prepare, I learned these very strange lines for two scenes, one in Episode 4, in which my brother goes to hit me, and one in Episode 10, in which I walk into a fire and survive, unscathed.

In those days, I thought of myself as healthy. Sometimes I got a little light-headed, because I often had low blood pressure and a low heart rate. Once in a while, I’d get dizzy and pass out. When I was fourteen, I had a migraine that kept me in bed for a couple of days, and in drama school I’d collapse once in a while. But it all seemed manageable, part of the stress of being an actor and of life in general. Now I think that I might have been experiencing warning signs of what was to come.

I read for “Game of Thrones” in a tiny studio in Soho. Four days later, I got a call. Apparently, the audition hadn’t been a disaster. I was told to fly to Los Angeles in three weeks and read for Benioff and Weiss and the network executives. I started working out intensely to prepare. They flew me business class. I stole all the free tea from the lounge. At the audition, I tried not to look when I spotted another actor––tall, blond, willowy, beautiful––walking by. I read two scenes in a dark auditorium, for an audience of producers and executives. When it was over, I blurted out, “Can I do anything else?”

David Benioff said, “You can do a dance.” Never wanting to disappoint, I did the funky chicken and the robot. In retrospect, I could have ruined it all. I’m not the best dancer.

As I was leaving the auditorium, they ran after me and said, “Congratulations, Princess!” I had the part.

I could hardly catch my breath. I went back to the hotel, where some people invited me to a party on the roof. “I think I’m good!” I told them. Instead, I went to my room, ate Oreos, watched “Friends,” and called everyone I knew.

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