Emilia Clarke

Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke was born on 23 October 1986 in London and grew up in Oxfordshire. Her father, Peter Roderick Clarke, was a theatre sound engineer from Wolverhampton, and her mother, Jennifer Susan Dodd Clarke, is a businesswoman who serves as vice-president for marketing at a global management consultancy and director of The Anima Foundation, a charity supporting young people in Ghana. Clarke has a younger brother, Bennett, who worked in the camera department on Game of Thrones. On her mother's side, Clarke is of partial Indian descent; her maternal grandmother was born to a great-grandmother and a man from British India.

Clarke's interest in acting began at age three, sparked by a production of the musical Show Boat. At ten, her father brought her to a West End audition for The Goodbye Girl, a musical by Neil Simon. She attended Rye St Antony School in Headington and St Edward's School, Oxford, where she appeared in student productions of Twelfth Night and West Side Story, leaving in 2005. After unsuccessfully applying to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she worked and travelled before enrolling at Drama Centre London, graduating in 2009. That same year she appeared in Sense, a production co-produced by Company of Angels and Drama Centre London, and made her first credited television appearance in a 2009 episode of the BBC One soap opera Doctors.

Following graduation, Clarke took on non-acting work while auditioning and appeared in two commercials for the charity Samaritans. Her first professional film role came in the 2010 television film Triassic Attack, in which she played a character named Savannah; the film aired on the Syfy channel in November 2010. Despite the production's negative reviews, Screen International named her a UK Star of Tomorrow. In 2010 she was cast as Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones, replacing Tamzin Merchant after the pilot was reshot. The series, based on George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels, ran from April 2011 to May 2019, with Clarke appearing across all eight seasons. Her portrayal of Daenerys earned her four Primetime Emmy Award nominations: three for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2013, 2015, and 2016, and one for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2019. By 2017 she was reported to be earning between £1.2 and £2 million per episode. She also contributed her voice and likeness to the 2014 Game of Thrones video game.

Beyond Game of Thrones, Clarke built a varied screen career. She played Sarah Connor in the science fiction film Terminator: Genisys in 2015 and Qi'ra in Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. She starred in the romantic dramas Me Before You in 2016 and Last Christmas in 2019, and appeared as G'iah in the Marvel Cinematic Universe miniseries Secret Invasion in 2023. Her first short film credit was Shackled in 2012, which was later featured in the 2020 Amazon Prime Video anthology series Murder Manual. That same year she appeared alongside Elliott Tittensor in the comedy film Spike Island, which was subsequently picked up by Level 33 Entertainment for North American distribution in 2015. She also starred in the black comedy-crime drama Dom Hemingway alongside Jude Law in 2013.

Clarke made her Broadway debut from March to April 2013, playing Holly Golightly in a production of Breakfast at Tiffany's. The production and her performance received mixed reviews from critics. On the West End, she was cast as Nina in a production of The Seagull, though the run was suspended due to COVID-19 lockdowns.