Emilia Clarke talks aging, beauty and plastic surgery

Around the time the final season of Game of Thrones was airing, star Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) opened up about the two life-threatening brain aneurysms she had suffered during the early days of the show. She’s done a lot of good work raising awareness of and money for brain injury treatment since then, and now finds that the experience has given a new outlook on aging and beauty.

“After the surgery, because I felt so scared and under-confident, I was putting all of that into how I looked,” she told PEOPLE. “As I got older, I realized that people are at their most beautiful when they’re not thinking about themselves and considering their own beauty.”

"What the f— is wrong with aging? What are the two truths in life? Taxes and death. It’s happening. Getting older is a guarantee. I think the women who look most beautiful are the women who don’t look younger.”"

Clarke also has a pretty firm opinion on plastic surgery, which isn’t for her. “The idea of me putting my face in the hands of someone else with a knife, no, no, no! Don’t come at me with that. It’s not going to happen. Number one is the fear, and number two, I can’t do my job if I can’t move my face.”

"If someone would tell me that they think that I needed something in order to be acceptable to the ridiculous beauty standards that society has set, I’m going to tell them to let themselves out. I’m not confident in how I look, but I am competent in telling someone who has an opinion on how I look that I’m not interested in hearing it."

Speaking of looks, Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) came out with a new one on the red carpet GQ Men of the Year Awards in London, showing off her bleached blonde hair:

It’s a little bit Targaryen! Most likely Williams dyed it for her role as punk icon Pamela Rooke in Danny Boyle’s new TV drama about the Sex Pistols.

Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger) joins Jeremy Renner in prison drama

Next up, Game of Thrones alum Aidan Gillan (Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish) has joined the cast of Mayor of Kingstown, an upcoming Paramount+ drama starring Marvel’s Jeremy Renner as a power broker in a Michigan town “where the business of incarceration is the only thriving industry.” According to Deadline, Gillan will play a Russian mobster serving a lie sentence in Kingstown’s supermax prison.

Moving on, Game of Thrones star John Bradley (Samwell Tarly) is having a rough go of it alongside Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson in Moonfall, Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster flick?

Moonfall is out on February 4.

Amazon has also released some first-look images from The Rig, about a mysterious disturbance on an oil rig off the Scottish coast that makes the workers question their loyalties. The movie has a sizable cast, but we’re most interested in Game of Thrones stars Owen Teale (Alliser Thorne) and Iain Glen (Jorah Mormont)…

There’s no release date for The Rig as of yet.

Finally, and this one’s a little weird, Kristofer Hivju (Tormund Giantsbane) is going to play chess against a 10-year-old app version of Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen. For taking part in the Magnus Carlsen Celebrity Charity Challenge, Hivju will get $5,000 donated to the charity of his choice. If he wins, he will get an extra $50,000 to donate.

You can watch Hivju fight this robot here. He plays today!

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