Emilia Clarke Opened Up About Hating Her Reflection After Brain Aneurysm Surgery

    "When I looked in the mirror, I just saw pain in my eyes."

    Ellie Woodward
    by Ellie Woodward

    BuzzFeed Staff

    Back in March, Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke acknowledged that she'd experienced several life-threatening brain aneurysms during the show's run.

    Sipa Usa / SIPA USA/PA Images

    In an essay for the New Yorker, Clarke explained that she was rushed into urgent surgery in 2011 after being diagnosed with a subarachnoid haemorrhage — a stroke that can kill one-third of patients.

    Angela Weiss / AFP / Getty Images

    She wrote: "I’d never experienced fear like that — a sense of doom closing in. I could see my life ahead, and it wasn’t worth living. I am an actor; I need to remember my lines. Now I couldn’t recall my name. In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug. I asked the medical staff to let me die."

    Clarke went on to write that although she returned to work six weeks later, she asked the show's bosses to keep her condition private, and she was feeling as if she was "about to die every minute of every day".

    HBO

    Last month, Clarke shared some never-seen-before photos of herself recovering after her first surgery in 2011. She went on to explain that after her second aneurysm in 2013, "part of [her] brain died".

    CBS

    Speaking to CBS This Morning, she said: "With the second one, there was a bit of my brain that actually died. If part of your brain doesn't get blood to it for a minute, it will just no longer work. It's like you short-circuit."

    Well, Clarke has now opened up some more about her experience, revealing the extent to which her surgeries affected her self-esteem.

    Speaking to Stylist, Clarke revealed that she couldn't bear to look at herself in the mirror, explaining that medication and water retention left her feeling "deeply unattractive".

    CBS

    She said: "After my operations, I didn't want to look at my own face. I was so full of drugs from being in the hospital that I had a lot of water retention, and one-half of my face was quite swollen. I felt so deeply unattractive."

    She went on to say that all she could see was "pain in [her] eyes" when she looked at her reflection.

    In fact, Clarke struggled with her reflection so much that she resorted to applying makeup without the aid of a mirror.

    However, six years after her second operation, Clarke has made peace with her experience and believes in practising self-love.

    You can read the full interview with Emilia Clarke here.