Emilia Clarke has been open about her brain injury and subsequent surgery for years, but in a new interview she opened up about the very real fears these episodes in her life have evoked.

"When you have a brain injury, your sense of self changes on a dramatic level, so your anxiety about going into the workplace quadruples overnight," Clark told the British social enterprise magazine The Big Issue. [From "Game of Thrones," where I played Daenerys Targaryen from 2011 to 2019], I'm afraid I'm going to get fired. Am I going to be fired because they think I'm not capable of pulling this off?

Clarke returned to work within weeks of his first brain injury, but was terrified that the pressure would cause a second brain injury. He thought at the time, "If I'm going to die, I want to die on live television."

In 2019, actress Me Before You wrote a deeply personal essay for The New Yorker about her health issues. She revealed that she had suffered one aneurysm in 2011, when she was 24, and had brain surgery at that time.

In that essay, she wrote, "Season 2 was the worst for me. I didn't know what Daenerys was doing. To tell you the truth, every minute of every day, I thought I was going to die."

In 2013, Clark had to undergo a second brain surgery, this time more invasive and the recovery even more painful than the first.

However, the actress founded the charity SameYou in 2019 to give hope to others recovering from brain injury, even though she admits that she almost lost all hope herself while all this was happening.

Earlier this year, Clark and her mother were invited to Windsor Castle, where Prince William presented her with an MBE for her work with SameYou.

Another royal connection, The Big Issue, is a magazine that helps people in poverty-stricken Britain, and one that Prince William has sold to passersby on the street in the past.