Emilia Clarke

Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke (born 23 October 1986) is a British actress. She is best known for her portrayal of Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones (2011–2019), for which she received nominations for four Primetime Emmy Awards. Clarke studied at Drama Centre London, appearing in a number of stage productions. Her television debut was a guest appearance in the BBC One medical soap opera Doctors in 2009, at age 22. Clarke made her Broadway debut as Holly Golightly in the 2013 play Breakfast at Tiffany's, and played Nina in a West End production of The Seagull that was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Her film roles include Sarah Connor in the science fiction film Terminator Genisys (2015), Qi'ra in the Star Wars film Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), and the romance films Me Before You (2016) and Last Christmas (2019). She starred as G'iah in the Marvel Cinematic Universe miniseries Secret Invasion (2023). Early life Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke was born on 23 October 1986 in London. She grew up in Oxfordshire. Her father, Peter Clarke, was a theatre sound engineer from Wolverhampton. Her mother, Jennifer, was a businesswoman and is the vice-president for marketing at a global management consultancy firm . Clarke has Indian ancestry on her mother's side of the family; her maternal grandmother was the child of a secret affair between Clarke's great-grandmother and a man from the Indian subcontinent, and wore light make-up to conceal the darker complexion she had inherited from her father. She credits this background for her family's having a "history of fighters", stating, "The fact that [my grandmother] had to hide her skin colour, essentially, and try desperately to fit in with everyone else must've been incredibly difficult." She stated that her grandmother "loved India more than she loved England" and as such, when she died, sixteen-year-old Clarke travelled to India to scatter her ashes. She has an older brother, Bennett, who works in the entertainment industry and was part of the camera department on Game of Thrones.