‘Part of my brain is missing': Emilia Clarke surprised she can speak after two aneurysms

Actor first opened up about her health in a New Yorker op-ed published in March 2019

Game of Thrones actor Emilia Clarke is amazed by her recovery journey since suffering two life-threatening brain aneurysms during her time on the HBO drama. Clarke opened up more about the health ordeal in an interview with BBC's Sunday Morning show.

"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," she said. "I am in the really, really, really small minority of people that can survive that," the star added.

The actor also quipped that she's seen a scan of her brain following the aneurysms. "There’s quite a bit missing, which always makes me laugh," Clarke added. "Because strokes, basically, as soon as any part of your brain doesn’t get blood for a second, it’s gone. And so the blood finds a different route to get around, but then whatever bit it’s missing is therefore gone.”

Clarke first opened up about her health in a New Yorker op-ed published in March 2019. The Game of Thrones actor revealed she suffered her first brain aneurysm in 2011 at 24 years old. While at the gym, she had to pause her workout due to unbearable pain and made her way to the bathroom where she became sick. "The pain — shooting, stabbing, constricting pain — was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged," she recalled. A fellow gymgoer noticed Clarke in the bathroom and called an ambulance for her.

After an MRI of her brain, she was diagnosed with a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain. “I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture,” she said.