Emilia Clarke: 'I genuinely knew I was being brain damaged'

Emilia Clarke. Photo / Getty

Emilia Clarke recited her Dothraki dialogue when going through her brain aneurysm.

The 32-year-old actress recently revealed that she had to undergo surgery in 2011 and 2013 and has now admitted she "genuinely knew" at the time she was experiencing a major health scare so did everything she could to keep her brain active, including testing her knowledge of the fictional language she uses in Game of Thrones.

Game of Thrones season 2. Emilia Clarke as Daenrys. Photo / Supplied

She told talk show host Stephen Colbert: "The easy way of describing it is that it's the worst headache that a human could possibly manage to experience. It was pretty intense.

"I genuinely knew I was being brain damaged. I don't know how.

"[I] moved my fingers, toes, my hands, asked myself questions, Dothraki lines. [I was] really trying to force my memory to stay conscious."

Asked by the presenter how she knew to perform the exercises, she referenced a line from 'GoT' and said: "The mind is an extraordinary thing. I just knew that I was ... not today."

Emilia Clarke attends the screening of Solo: A Star Wars Story during the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival. Photo / Getty

Emilia admitted her near-death experience left her feeling "petrified" for some time but eventually came to realise how "lucky" she is to still be alive.

She said: "It made me petrified most of the time.

"I wish I could sit here and say I was just like, 'Yeah, let's go jump out of a plane!' I really wasn't.

"But then at some point, you start to realise how lucky you are and the perspective that gives you is enormous, and then that is for the rest of your life, you're lucky, you don't know how lucky you are."

In the wake of her health scare, Emilia has helped to set up the charity SameYou, which helps to provide treatment for people recovering from brain injuries and strokes.