The 37-year-old, who portrayed Daenerys Targaryen in the fantasy series, had a brain bleed in 2011 while exercising in a north London gym.
Clarke mostly kept the details of her injury a secret from her coworkers on the show because she didn’t want to share them with the public.
But after the brain bleed, she said that she was afraid her supervisors would believe she couldn’t perform her job.
While she was still performing on the show in 2013, medical professionals also found evidence of another brain hemorrhage.
She talked about the challenges she had going back to work following her brain injury in a recent interview with the Big Issue.
We all started out fearing, “Oh my god, am I going to get fired?” Are they going to fire me because they don’t think I can do the job?
After her initial brain bleed, Clarke returned to work in a matter of weeks. However, she remembered worrying that the stress and strain of working in front of cameras and thousands of people might force her to have another hemorrhage.
Following her recovery from her wounds, Clarke founded a nonprofit with her mother Jennifer Clarke to assist those suffering from brain injuries.
