Emilia Clarke's birthday
Best known for starring as the Mother of Dragons in HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones, Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke was born on October 23rd, 1986 in London, England. Emilia first became interested in acting at the age of 3, when she saw a production of the musical Show Boat. After leaving school, Emilia took a sabbatical year and later enrolled at the Drama Centre London, where she appeared in a number of stage productions and graduated in 2009.
To support herself while she attended auditions, Emilia worked in various non-acting jobs. Her television debut was in 2009, when she made a guest appearance in the BBC One medical soap opera Doctors. A year later, she was part of the main cast in the TV film Triassic Attack. Although the film received negative reviews, Emilia’s performance was praised and she was considered to have a very promising film career. Clarke’s breakthrough role finally came when she was cast as Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO epic fantasy television series Game of Thrones in 2011. The series ran for 8 seasons, until its end in 2019. Emilia received very positive reviews for her performance on the show, and she became one of the highest-paid actors on television in 2017. For her work on the show, she was nominated for several awards, such as Primetime Emmy Awards and Critics’ Choice Awards.
While she continued to work on Game of Thrones, Clarke appeared in the short film Shackled (2012) and also made her Broadway debut in 2013 in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Other film roles were in Spike Island (2012,) Dom Hemingway (2013,) and The Garden of the Last Days (2013.) Clarke experienced box office success (despite the film bombing reviews) when she played a younger version of the iconic character Sarah Connor in reboot Terminator Genisys, in 2013. Her next big success was as the female lead in the romantic drama Me Before You (2016,) based on a book by the same name. Although the film received mixed reviews, it was a big hit in theaters.
In 2018, Emilia was cast in yet another big blockbuster franchise, this time in an origin story movie within the Star Wars universe, Solo: A Star Wars Story. Although the movie was highly anticipated and her performance was considered one of its highlights, it failed to fare well both with the critics and the box office. Clarke appeared in two films in 2019, crime thriller Above Suspicion and romantic comedy Last Christmas. Over the course of the decade, Emilia has also done voice acting work, most notably lending her voice in animated series such as Futurama, Robot Chicken and Thunderbirds Are Go. She is set to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe as part of the main cast in miniseries Secret Invasion, along Samuel L. Jackson in his role as Nick Fury, premiering sometime in 2023.
