{"id":683066,"date":"2026-06-04T03:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T03:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/683066\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T03:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T03:09:10","slug":"emilia-clarke-on-surviving-two-brain-hemorrhages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/683066\/","title":{"rendered":"Emilia Clarke on Surviving Two Brain Hemorrhages"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cGame of Thrones\u201d star Emilia Clarke<\/a> gave a moving speech while being honored at Variety\u2018s Power of Women London<\/a>, presented by Lifetime, about surviving two brain hemorrhages in her 20s.<\/p>\n

\n\tClarke went in depth about surviving the hemorrhages in her cover story<\/a> last week, but still maintained a sense of humor 15 years after the health scare.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor a number of years, I felt that I had cheated death, and it was coming to get me,\u201d she said. \u201cI truly felt like I had done something wrong, and I shouldn\u2019t be here. I also thought it ruined my ability to act \u2014 which some people might agree with!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tClarke and her mother founded the charity SameYou in 2019, when she publicly revealed what she had been through, and their goal has been to help fellow survivors on brain bleeds. \u201cWhen I finally shared my story in 2019, we were overwhelmed by the response,\u201d she said at Power of Women London. \u201cMostly young people reached out to tell us their own stories. Today we have tens of thousands of survivors in our community saying\u00a0essentially the\u00a0same thing: the journey to healing feels like falling off the edge of a cliff without anyone there to catch you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d star was honored alongside Emma Corrin, Hannah Waddingham, Suki Waterhouse and Cynthia Erivo. Read her full speech below and watch the video above:<\/p>\n

\n\tHello everyone,
Thank you, Thea, for that wonderful introduction and thank you Variety for celebrating this incredible group of honorees. It is a privilege to be in a room full of people who are using their platforms to highlight such important causes near and dear to them.
I am personally here to talk about a shocking health inequality that affects millions of people yet remains largely invisible. In Hollywood, that\u2019s usually a superpower. In healthcare, it\u2019s a problem. It\u2019s also my story, and the reason I founded my charity, SameYou.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is the fact: one in three people will suffer a brain injury at some point in their lives, and if you survive your brain trauma, you might expect to be cured and get back to life as normal. But you would be wrong.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe have a universal crisis when it comes to brain injury aftercare. The combined number of people currently living with the life-changing consequences of stroke and traumatic brain injury in the UK and the US is more than 15 million people alone. Yet our healthcare systems still don\u2019t have a clear way out of this crisis or the ability to help those in need.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat is why, with my mother Jenny, we founded SameYou. Because finding the essential support you need to return to life is often a lottery\u2014a social inequality that rarely gets airtime, let alone focus and funding. It\u2019s one of the biggest gaps in health and social care systems, wherever you live.<\/p>\n

\n\tI was 22 when I suffered my first brain haemorrhage. 24 when I had my second. I was also 22 when I filmed the first season of Game of Thrones, and 24 when I made my Broadway debut. Id like to blame my brain haemorrhage for the bad reviews but it happened after we closed, early\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tFifteen years after my first bleed, I have the hindsight to see how difficult that time truly was. I never had the chance to reflect on what my two brain traumas had done to me because I could walk, talk, be myself, remember my lines and was back on camera within weeks of both brain injuries.<\/p>\n

\n\tI was fine, right?<\/p>\n

\n\tI ignored what was going on with my hormones, or rather my lack of them, my extreme fatigue that no one else I knew in their 20s suffered? What about my anxiety? Surely that\u2019s normal working in our image obsessed industry? Breaking a rib after filming a sex scene? Well, maybe that was his fault. But sometimes even blacking out after long night shoots? The pain all over my body? I didn\u2019t even think I should find out why. I just put it down as stress and my non-stop work schedule, that I wasn\u2019t too good at coping with. I thought I had been fixed. So did my doctors. None of us could see the pattern, so I blamed myself.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt never occurred to me that maybe the problem wasn\u2019t me\u2026that it was because brain injury is extraordinarily complex, and we\u2019re still only beginning to understand the impact it can have long after you\u2019ve supposedly recovered.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat usually happens when you\u2019re rushed to 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\u2019t realise is that whatever symptoms remain\u2014physical, cognitive, emotional, linguistic\u2014the consequence is unresolved trauma. And there are simply too few neuropsychologists and specialist rehabilitation services for that reality to change without a major shift in priorities.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen everyone around you thinks you look fine, they treat you as though you are. Eventually, you start believing you should be too. I often compare brain injury today to where cancer was a century ago: misunderstood, stigmatised and hidden from view.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen rehabilitation is available, it\u2019s usually measured in weeks rather than years and focused on only the most visible symptoms. Brain injury recovery is still in its infancy, leading to lost potential, lost livelihoods and too many people falling through the cracks.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt SameYou, our mission is to help rethink recovery.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2011, I didn\u2019t want anyone to know about my brain bleeds. I was ashamed and overwhelmed by a diagnosis I didn\u2019t understand. We didn\u2019t even tell HBO until we knew I wasn\u2019t going to die which in TV terms, is usually when they kill you off anyway. After my second haemorrhage in 2014, I started to think that perhaps speaking publicly might help. But it still took years for me to grapple with my truth.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen I finally shared my story in 2019, we were overwhelmed by the response. Mostly young people reached out 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 without anyone there to catch you.<\/p>\n

\n\tI knew I had to do something. It started with wanting to buy a new sofa for the family room in my hospital\u2019s ICU. Then it became supporting the nurses who held my hand, cleaned my body and talked to me while I tried to understand what was happening. Then I started imagining what recovery would have looked like if I hadn\u2019t had my family. If I hadn\u2019t been financially stable. If I hadn\u2019t had a job that was willing to wait for me. Eventually, all of that became SameYou.<\/p>\n

\n\tRecovery is every bit as important as survival.<\/p>\n

\n\tPeople need guidance. They need answers. They need support\u2014physically and mentally.<\/p>\n

\n\tBecause when you think about who you are\u2014your personality, your intellect, your humour, your memories, your excellent taste\u2014where do they live? Your mind.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd when that fails you, it can shake your trust in yourself. It can leave you frightened and convinced you\u2019ll never be who you were again.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut we know that the recovery to yourself is possible. Hence the name: SameYou.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve recently been on my own very belated recovery journey, fifteen years after my first brain bleed. Through 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis was a journey, not a miracle cure.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne in three of us will suffer a brain injury in our lifetime. That\u2019s an awful lot of people living with life-changing consequences.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo if it happens to you, or someone you love, they deserve a way forward.<\/p>\n

\n\tThank 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd thank you for listening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cGame of Thrones\u201d star Emilia Clarke gave a moving speech while being honored at Variety\u2018s Power of Women…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[146711,88,297196],"class_list":["post-683066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-emilia-clarke","tag-entertainment","tag-power-of-women-london"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}