Emilia Clarke landed the role of Daenerys Targaryen on HBO's Game of Thrones when she was still a young actor, and rode the show's popularity to international fame. Game of Thrones was the most iconic show of the 2010s and Clarke was in the middle of it as the Mother of Dragons.
It's rare for an actor to score such an important gig so early in their career. Given how intense producing the show was, Clarke is only recently starting to appreciate how singular an experience it was. "The more distance I have from Game of Thrones, the more I can quantify it," she told PEOPLE last June. "When I started, you don't know what you're doing, you don't know what you're surrounded by and you don't know what you're taking part in."
"Now, as more and more time goes between it and me doing it, the more I'm like, that was incredibly special and that was incredibly rare."
Clarke is one of several Game of Thrones cast members whose careers got major boosts thanks to their appearances on the show. Castmates like Kit Harington, Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams also benefitted, and actors like Pedro Pascal and Jason Momoa are now all-out movie stars, which likely wouldn't have happened had people not fallen in love with their performances on Game of Thrones.
These days, Clarke is producing as well as acting; she started a production company called Magical Thinking Pictures to develop her own projects, which has only reinforced how unique her experience on Game of Thrones was; it is very hard getting a new movie or TV show off the ground, let alone getting it to the point where it becomes tremendously popular.
"Oh my God, I really understand how the sausage is made now," Clarke laughed. "It makes me see even more just how lightning in a bottle that was and how fortunate I was to have that as part of my experience as an actor...I was just incredibly, incredibly lucky to have had that experience, 100 percent."
Since Game of Thrones, Clarke has appeared in hit movies like Me Before You as well as TV shows she'd probably prefer we forget like Secret Invasion. She's also worked as a producer on movies like Pod Generation and The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland, and is currently working on a crime series for Prime Viceo called Criminal.
It's unlikely we'll see Clarke back in her platinum blonde Targaryen wig anytime soon, although Daenerys did make a cameo appearance in a vision in the season 2 finale of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon, so anything is possible.
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