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Ed Symkus: ‘Game of Thrones' Mother of Dragons likes to laugh

British actress Emilia Clarke wasn't supposed to be Daenerys Targaryen (you can also call her Mother of Dragons or Khaleesi) on "Game of Thrones." The part was originally played, on the show's unaired pilot, by Tamzin Merchant ("Pride & Prejudice," "Jane Eyre"). But when the show was picked up, Merchant was let go, and a fateful phone call resulted in Clarke, then a budding stage actress, getting to put on the long blonde wig, wear burlap outfits, lead a massive army, and fly around on a fire-breathing reptile.

Whether or not she had a plan, Clarke, 29, has since made sure that she wasn't going to be typecast. She hit the Broadway stage as Holly Golightly in the 2013 production of "Breakfast at Tiffany's," was the gritty Sarah Connor in last year's "Terminator" reboot, and is now costarring, opposite Sam Claflin, in the screen adaptation of Jojo Moyes' bestselling tearjerker "Me Before You." She plays Lou Clark, a happy-go-lucky caregiver for Claflin's Will Traynor, once a life-loving man-about-town who has suffered a debilitating accident.

So maybe if there was a plan, it was about showing range. Clarke has so much of it she was absolutely unrecognizable when she sat down for a chat last week in New York. In place of the fierce, flaxen-maned Khaleesi, there was an auburn-haired woman, with a big, genuine smile, an infectious laugh, and a pair of dancing eyebrows that took on a life of their own.

Q: You did a lot of stage acting before you moved on to television and movies. Is it all very different?

A: There's a style for acting onstage and a style for acting onscreen, and I think they're almost two completely different things. Onstage you have to physicalize absolutely everything that you feel, and the fluidity has a storytelling of its own. Whereas onscreen, it's just so intimate. It's you and the camera, and you need to be as honest with the camera as you can. There's a huge gap between them, but I like doing both.

Q: It's a bit of a shock watching you play the grim Daenerys every week on "Game of Thrones," then seeing you so full of joy in "Me Before You." Was that a big stretch for you?

A: I was really lucky because Lou Clark is kind of like me. That was one of the biggest things when I first read the book and the script. I was like, "Wow! She's got my surname as well!" (big laugh) So there was not very much acting, really, but the other stuff ("Thrones") is acting.

Q: Did you actively pursue the part?

A: Aw, hells, yeah! I was going, "Is it time for the audition yet? What day is the audition?" When I read the script, I was doing "Terminator," and I got on a Skype with the director right away. As soon as I was back in England, it was just in time for the audition process to start. I came in and did an audition by myself. And they were like, "Cool!" Then I did a chemistry audition with Sam. Now, I had just finished "Terminator," and I wanted to clean my body out of guns and protein powder. So I was on this weird cleanse diet, and I was eating raw bulbs of garlic and had really bad breath. On the day of our chemistry read, our director, Thea Sharrock, said, "You stink! You need to make it known that you're doing this weird thing." I said OK, and then went up to Sam and said, "I'm really sorry." (laughs)

Q: Did you draw anything from your own life for the character?

A: You go through life and you experience a huge amount, and I think actors are naturally quite empathetic and sort of sponge-like, anyway. So within the fabric of who you are, you have those things going on. So when you read a story, you empathize with it because you understand it, because you've lived it, on some level.

Q: Charles Dance plays Sam's father in the film, and though he was on "Game of Thrones" for the first few seasons as Tywin Lannister, you never had any scenes with him. Could you talk about finally getting to act with him?

A: I'd only met him once or twice during promotional things for the show. But he is a dreamy, dreamy man, and I remember, when he finished his part in the film, he said to me, "Darling, this is brilliant, and you're brilliant!" I was tearing up because he was saying all these great things. And working with him was amazing. Genuinely, the pinnacle of my career has been being able to make Charlie Dance laugh so hard, he had to stop (doing a scene). I was thinking, "Yes! In your face, Tywin!"

— Ed Symkus writes about movies for More Content Now.