A Field Guide To Emilia Clarke

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In case you've forgotten, the first season of "Game of Thrones" ended with Emilia Clarke completely nude in a pile of ashes, surrounded by three dragon hatchlings. We saw Daenerys Targaryen (Clarke's character) do a lot of freaky things last season, and we often saw her naked, but that dragon scene alone is enough of a reason to obsess over and write a Field Guide about Emilia Clarke.

Emilia Clarke was born in London in 1986 (we can't find her exact date, so we won't be able to hold a birthday party for her) but she was raised in Berkshire (although we've read Buckinghamshire elsewhere). Her father is a theater sound engineer, her mother is a businesswoman, and her brother is studying politics. Vague information? Yes, we agree. The internet is being very mysterious about Emilia Clarke's background.

Emilia started acting at the age of three, after her mother took her to see a production of "Show Boat" that her father was working on. "I clapped over my head because I was so mesmerised," she remembers. When she was fourteen, she started attending St Edward's School in Oxford, and later studied at the prestigious Drama Centre London (a school which produced names like Paul Bettany, Colin Firth, and Pierce Brosnan). Emilia landed a small part in an episode of the long-running BBC series "Doctors" while she was in school, and when she graduated in 2009, she was in a cheesy SyFy channel movie called "Triassic Attack," but for a moment, Emilia worried she was losing momentum. "You can't come out of drama school and think, 'It's all going to be amazing,'" she said. "You have to expect to work in a bar for at least five years and be a waitress for maybe two!" That was when Tamzin Merchant left the cast of "Game of Thrones" and Emilia picked up her role.

A lot of people wonder how familiar the cast of "Game of Thrones" is with the books in "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George R. R. Martin, and as far as we can tell, they're all rather obsessed with the novels. Harry Lloyd (who plays Viserys Targaryen) says he kept the first book under his throne during filming just so he could keep tabs on how his performance reflected Martin's vision. Emilia was just as concerned with portraying Daenerys properly, and she can keep pace with the fact-spouting nerds (said in the nicest way) over at WinterIsComing.net. She might not know the Dothraki language fluently, but she can confidently map her thoughts and intonations onto it, and that's damn impressive to us.

Another thing people often wonder about: the sex scenes. We read through a bunch of interviews with Emilia Clarke, and all of them ask about her experience with being nude on camera. At first, she was happy to answer the question:

How did you find the sex scenes?
I love this question so much! You know, as a young actress, it's not really your favourite thing, but you just get so into the character you forget about it completely. HBO's tasteful, it's not like it's anything I'd be worried about, so it was absolutely fine. It's not really what I concentrated on.

Later, not so much:

Fire and Blood: So let's kick this off with a never-before asked question about how you felt doing nude scenes in Game of Thro—–wait, I think I recall one or two people having asked you that one before. I suppose I'll lead with a costuming question instead, if that's alright.

Emilia Clarke: Haha, yes that is more than alright – music to my ears in fact!

That's not to say she's not down to be naked on camera, but it's not necessarily her favorite part of the job.

Where will Emilia go next in life? According to IMDb, she's in a movie called "Overdrive" which is currently in pre-production, and she's currently filming a flick about an indie band set in the '90s, called "Spike Island." We just hope that HBO renews "Game of Thrones" for a third season, and another, and maybe another after that. We simply don't know what we'd do without Emilia Clarke scenes like the one below.

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For more Emilia Clarke-related goodness, check out:
· This fan site: Adoring Emilia Clarke (emilia-clarke.net)
· Her Twitter (twitter.com)
· An interview in which Emilia describes eating the fake horse's heart, via Vulture (vulture.com)
· And an interview with WinterIsComing.net (winteriscoming.net)