Emilia Clarke on surviving two brain hemorrhages
“Game of Thrones” star Emilia Clarke gave a moving speech as she was honored Variety‘s Power of Women London about surviving two brain haemorrhages in her 20s.
Clarke elaborated on surviving the bleeds in her cover story last week, but still retained a sense of humor 15 years after the health crisis.
“For a number of years I felt like I had cheated death, and it got me,” she said. “I really felt like I had done something wrong and that I shouldn’t have been here. I also thought it was ruining my ability to act – which some people might agree with!”
Clarke and her mother founded the charity SameYou in 2019, when she publicly revealed what she had been through, and their aim was to help fellow survivors of brain haemorrhages. “When I finally shared my story in 2019, we were overwhelmed by the response,” she said at Power of Women London. “Young people in particular reached out to us to tell us their own stories. 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 with no one to catch you.”
The “Game of Thrones” star was honored along with Emma Corrin, Hannah Waddingham, Suki Waterhouse and Cynthia Erivo. Read her full speech below and watch the video above:
Hello everyone,
Thank you, Thea, for that wonderful introduction and thank you Variety for celebrating this incredible group of honorees. It’s a privilege to be in a room full of people using their platforms to highlight such important issues close to their hearts.
I’m personally here to talk about a shocking health inequity that affects millions of people but remains largely invisible. In Hollywood, that’s usually a superpower. It is a problem in healthcare. It’s also my story and the reason I founded my charity SameYou.
This is a fact: one in three people will suffer a brain injury at some point in their lives, and if you survive your brain trauma, you can expect to be healed and return to normal life. But you’d be wrong.
We have a universal crisis when it comes to aftercare for brain injuries. The combined number of people currently living with the life-changing effects of stroke and traumatic brain injury in Britain and the US alone is more than 15 million people. Yet our healthcare systems still have no clear way out of this crisis, nor the ability to help those in need.
That is why we founded SameYou together with my mother Jenny. Because finding the essential support you need to get back into life is often a lottery – a social inequality that rarely gets attention, let alone focus and funding. It’s one of the biggest gaps in the health and social care systems, wherever you live.
I was 22 when I had my first brain hemorrhage. 24 when I got my second. I was also 22 when I filmed the first season of Game of Thrones, and 24 when I made my Broadway debut. I’d like to blame my brain hemorrhage for the bad reviews, but it happened after we closed,…
Fifteen years after my first bleed, I can see in retrospect how difficult that time really was. I never had a chance to think about what my two brain traumas had done to me because I could walk, talk, be myself, remember my lines, and be back in front of the camera within weeks of both brain injuries.
I was doing well, right?
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 my twenties suffered from? What about my anxiety? Isn’t that normal in our image-obsessed industry? Break a rib after filming a sex scene? Well, maybe that was his fault. But sometimes even a blackout after long night shoots? The pain all over my body? I didn’t even think I needed to find out why. I just chalked it up to stress and my non-stop work schedule, which I didn’t handle very well. I thought I was fixed. So did my doctors. None of us could see the pattern, so I blamed myself.
It never occurred to me that maybe the problem wasn’t me… that it was because brain injuries are extremely complex, and we’re still only beginning to understand the impact they can have long after you’ve supposedly recovered.
What usually happens when you are taken to the hospital with a brain injury is that doctors do everything possible to save your life. They stop the bleeding, remove the clot, find the source, cut it out, stitch you up and send you home. But what many people don’t realize is that whatever symptoms persist – physical, cognitive, emotional, linguistic – the result is unresolved trauma. And there are simply too few neuropsychologists and specialized rehabilitation services to change that reality without a major shift in priorities.
If everyone around you thinks you look good, they will treat you as if you are. Eventually you start to believe that you should be too. I often compare brain injury today with cancer a century ago: misunderstood, stigmatized and hidden from view.
When rehabilitation is available, it is usually measured in weeks rather than years, and the focus is only on the most visible symptoms. Brain injury recovery is still in its infancy, leading to loss of potential, loss of livelihoods and too many people falling through the cracks.
At SameYou, our mission is to help rethink recovery.
In 2011, I didn’t want anyone to know about my brain bleeds. I felt ashamed and overwhelmed by a diagnosis I didn’t understand. We didn’t even tell HBO until we knew I wasn’t going to die, which in TV terms is usually when they kill you anyway. After my second bleed in 2014, I started thinking that public speaking might help. But it took me years to wrestle with my truth.
When I finally shared my story in 2019, we were overwhelmed by the response. It was mainly young people who told us their own stories. Today, tens of thousands of survivors in our community have essentially the same thing: the journey to healing feels like falling off the edge of a cliff with no one to catch you.
I knew I had to do something. It started with the desire to buy a new couch for the family room in the ICU of my hospital. Then it became supporting the nurses who held my hand, cleaned my body and talked to me as I tried to understand what was happening. Then I started to imagine what recovery would have been like if I hadn’t had my family. If I hadn’t been financially stable. If I hadn’t had a job willing to wait for me. Eventually it all became SameYou.
Recovery is just as important as survival.
People need guidance. They need answers. They need support, both physically and mentally.
Because 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 if you don’t succeed, it can shake your confidence in yourself. It can make you scared and convinced that you will never be who you were again.
But we know that recovery for yourself is possible. Hence the name: SameYou.
I recently went on my own very late recovery journey, fifteen years after my first brain hemorrhage. With the guidance and help of the extraordinary David Putrino at Mount Sinai in New York, I now have the energy and positivity I had in my twenties.
This was a journey, not a silver bullet.
One in three of us will suffer a brain injury during our lifetime. That’s an awful lot of people living with life-changing consequences.
So if it happens to you or someone you love, they deserve resolution.
Thank you for giving me this platform to tell my story. Thank you to the tens of thousands of SameYou survivors who continue to inspire us every day.
And thanks for listening.
