Emilia Clarke discusses choosing roles after Game of Thrones

I’ll just say it: of everyone on Game of Thrones, I think Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) has the best chance at transitioning into full-blown movie stardom. And I’m not saying it because she literally is in a new wide release movie, Last Christmas, although she is. In the final season of Thrones especially, she displayed a gravitas that could take her far. And her acting skill set reaches far beyond drama.

She’s also being deliberate and careful about what she does next, waiting for the right role rather than the first to come along. “So I’ve had the good fortune of being in this incredible show with this incredible character,” she told NPR recently, talking about Thrones. “And my goodness, if I were to get stereotyped as the mother of dragons, I could ask for worse. It’s really quite wonderful.”

"But what it’s left me with — after 10 years of seeing that, and being a part of that, and of doing quite big movies in my hiatuses and all of those things — is a yearning for a different sort of creative ownership. So I started my production company about three years ago — very, very quietly because I didn’t want it to go wrong and have it be public knowledge — and now I’ve got six or seven things on my slate that I’m writing and producing. And because there is — I mean, you know, the landscape has changed for young actresses and actors for the sort of roles that are out there. I struggle to find them, because the thing that I’ve learned from being on 10 years in the show is that the biggest luxury in life is time and space. So I wanted to take those two things, which I have very luckily been able to have now, and really consider what my next option is. Because I care about what I’m doing with my time."

A classic solution: if the right parts aren’t coming along as often as you’d like, make your own.

Clarke is switching milieus for Last Christmas, where she plays a down-on-her-luck aspirant singer and current retail worker named Kate. “No, she’s not the mother of dragons,” Clarke admitted. “She’s got mother-of-dragon tendencies.”

"Yeah, so Kate — she is your anti-heroine. We’re quite used to seeing, I think, in rom-coms a sort of perfect depiction of a young lady — and that ain’t Kate. And it’s in her flaws, is where she becomes so relatable. So she is struggling to get herself together, and she’s struggling to take care of herself, she’s struggling to take care of those around her, not really accepting help, kind of. You can tell she’s hiding from something, and life isn’t bringing her much joy when we first meet her. But she is trying."

What Kate’s running from may be a major surgical procedure she had about a year before we meet her. You hear you, and you can’t help but think of what Clarke herself went through around the second season of Game of Thrones, when a series of brain aneurysm threatener her life. “I wouldn’t say it was the defining thing that brought me to [the movie],” Clarke reflected. “[Writer] Dame Emma Thompson probably was that. But it definitely allowed me to bring quite a lot of truth to what Kate’s struggles were, because for Kate she had her health crisis in her early 20s, and that’s when I had mine too. And that time for any young person is incredibly intimidating.”

Speaking to PEOPLE for its first-ever Kindness Issue, Clarke recalled the trying experience, and the people who helped get her through it. “The paramedics were unbelievable,” she remembered. “They’d given me drugs so I was in less pain, wrapped me up like a tortilla and made me laugh the whole way to the hospital. There I was, bleeding in the brain, and there we were in this ambulance having an absolute giggle. They were so gracious.”

"There was also my mum, when she went into mum superpower in the hospital: I had aphasia [loss of speech], and she looked at me and went, ‘Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.’ She made me believe she understood exactly what I was saying. It was genuinely her greatest moment.And every single nurse I came across was so kind. It’s why I became ambassador to the Royal College of Nursing in 2018. Nurses are the unsung heroes, they’re at people’s most frightening moments."

The whole experience inspired Clarke to create the SameYou charity, which is dedicated to helping young people recover from brain injury and stroke. “People’s lives are transformed completely after a brain injury, and the core of our work is recovery,” she said, “it’s not just the first weeks that you need help, you still need help for years. I wanted to match someone with a consistent person who has the answers and can hold their hand and tell them that they’re not alone. Being there when someone is scared, confused or angry is one of the kindest things you can do.”

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Between her talent, her savvy, her experience, and her positive attitude, it seems like Emilia Clarke can go exactly as far in the industry — and in life — as she wants. I’m marking it now: movie star.

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h/t Yahoo Entertainment