Emilia Clarke couldn’t look at herself in the mirror after she suffered two brain aneurysms.
The ‘Game of Thrones’ star underwent major surgery in 2011 and again in 2013 after she developed a subarachnoid haemorrhage, a form of stroke caused by a ruptured aneurysm, and she has admitted she avoided looking at herself because all she could see was "pain."
Speaking to Stylist magazine, she said: "After my operations, I didn’t want to look at my own face. I don’t normally, but all my emotions were heightened. When I looked in the mirror, I just saw pain in my eyes. I found it very, very difficult. I used to put on make-up without looking in the mirror, which probably made me look a lot worse. My face didn’t change, but my feelings about myself changed. When you can look at yourself in the eyes and feel OK with what’s looking back at you, then what more do you need?"
But it wasn’t just her opinion of herself that changed after the second aneurysm as she was also concerned that she’d never be able to act again after part of her brain died.
She said recently: "So, they [the doctors] literally were looking at the brain and being like, ‘Well, we think it could be – could be her concentration, it could be her peripheral vision. For a very long time, I thought it was my ability to act…that was a deep paranoia."
But the 32-year-old actress – who is now fully recovered – was able to joke with the doctors at the time, even teasing that she’d lost the part of her brain which housed her "taste in men".
Emilia Clarke avoided mirrors after brain aneurysms
