Emilia Clarke is probably best known for her role on hit series Game of Thrones which ended after eight series in May 2019.
Alongside her time on Game of Thrones, Emilia has landed multiple top roles within the showbiz industry ever since she first starred on the show in 2011 as Daenerys Targaryen.
Elsewhere, she has had quite a rocky life, with her strong points also hitting with low points too as the star faced a near-fatal haemorrhage in 2011.
From her high points through to her low points, Daily Star has looked inside Emilia’s life to celebrate the actress turning 35 today (October 23).
Growing up
The star was born Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke was on October 23 1986 in London before moving and growing up in Oxfordshire.
Her father is Peter Clarke who was a theatre sound engineer originally from Wolverhampton and her mother Jennifer was a businesswoman and is the vice-president for marketing at a global management consultancy firm.
Emilia has an older brother Bennett who worked in the camera department on Game of Thrones alongside his sister.
In an interview, Emilia said her maternal grandmother was the child of a secret affair between her great-grandmother and a man from the Indian subcontinent.
Her grandmother used to wear lighter makeup to cover up her skin colour.
When her grandmother died when Emilia she went to India to scatter her ashes.
The star first became interested in acting aged just three when she saw the musical Show Boat and she went to an audition with her dad aged ten for The Goodbye Girl.
Emilia unsuccessfully applied to RADA, LAMDA, and Guildhall so she worked and travelled before going to the Drama Centre in London and graduated in 2009.
Childhood bullying
(Image: Getty Images)
Emilia went to boarding schools throughout her education where she said she felt like an outsider along with some of her friends.
Emilia was bullied at school for a peculiar reason, with the star openly discussing how she was often bullied for her full, thick eyebrows which she said she wanted to pluck but wasn’t allowed.
She has said before that her mum didn’t let her touch her eyebrows but now is grateful for the ‘rule’.
Her eyebrows have now become part of her signature look.
Career
(Image: Getty Images)
Emilia first started acting in stage productions while she was still at school including West Side Story and Twelfth Night when she was at St Edward’s school.
Her first film role was a student short film named Drop the Dog by the University of London.
When she graduation in 2009, Emilia worked various other jobs while still auditioning for roles which included two Samaritan adverts where she played a domestic abuse victim.
The first credited TV role she got was on Doctors in 2009 and the following year she was cast in her first professional film role, playing Savannah in the 2010 television film Triassic Attack.
Emilia then got her role as Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones in 2010 where she received critical acclaim for her portrayal of Daenerys.
She reportedly became one of the highest paid actresses earning between £1.2 and £2 million per episode as she received multiple award nominations and wins while on the show.
In a 2019 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Emilia revealed that she had been offered the role of Anastasia Steele in the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise but turned it down due to the amount of nudity involved.
Life threatening haemorrhage
(Image: CBS Sunday Morning)
In 2019 Emilia revealed that she had suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage which was caused by a ruptured aneurysm back in February 2011, which could have been fatal.
The haemorrhage came after she has just finished filming the first series of Game of Thrones when she was about to workout at her usual gym when she felt a sudden pain in her head which she described as having an elastic band around her brain.
She had to stop her workout and tried to recall some of her Game of Thrones lines to keep her memory going.
The next thing she remembers is hearing an ambulance and being told she had a life-threatening type of stroke which one third of patients die of.
She then underwent surgery which left her not being able to recall her own name and she also had a second aneurysm surgically treated in 2013.
Personal life
Emilia lives in the London Borough of Islington and in 2016 she bought a house worth $4.64 million in Venice Beach, California but sold it a few years later in December 2020.
It seems that Emilia is currently single but she has had some relationships over the years with talented men but none that she ever worked with on Game of Thrones.
During lockdown in 2020 the star was spotted walking her dog with assistant director Tom Turner but it was never confirmed whether the pair were an item.
Emilia dated Charlie McDowell for a year back in 2018 as they confirmed their relationship on social media, however the pair split and he is now married to fellow actress Lily Collins.
The actress met Cory Michael Smith while they were both working on Breakfast at Tiffany’s on Broadway but it seems that they just dated for a couple of months.
Before this it was rumoured that Emilia was engaged to actor and film director James Franco but in a statement she made it clear that they had never been seriously dating.
Dating Seth MacFarlane
(Image: FilmMagic)
Emilia’s relationship with Seth MacFarlane throughout 2012-2013 was well known to the public when Emilia was just 25 and the time and Seth was 39.
It’s thought that the pair were together for several months but didn’t give any public interviews about their relationship.
Neither of them gave any interviews or statements upon their split but it is thought they parted ways due to Emilia being based in Europe and Seth in the US.
Seth is the creator of the shows Family Guy and The Orville, which he also features in as well as being the co-creator of the television series American Dad! and The Cleveland Show.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
