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Emilia Clarke has revealed she was afraid of being fired from Game of Thrones after she suffered a brain haemorrhage in 2011. Clarke, 36, played “Mother of Dragons” Daenerys Targaryen on the hit HBO adaptation of George R R Martin’s fantasy novel series A Song of Ice and Fire. The British actor revealed she “was struck” by the bleed on the brain after filming the first season of the show, in a 2019 essay for The New Yorker. Clarke described how she began to feel a “bad headache coming on” while she was getting ready to work out at a gym in north London “to relieve the stress” around the release ofThrones. Soon after, the star collapsed and was taken to hospital. “The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain.” she wrote at the time. In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, the Me Before You star reflected on being diagnosed with the brain condition that turns fatal for a third of all patients, and how she feared it would cost her the part which eventually catapulted her to global fame. “I wasn’t afraid of dying,” she said. “I was afraid of being fired! “I decided: ‘This is not something that’s going to define me’. I never gave into any feeling of ‘Why me? This sucks’. I was just like – gotta get back on it,” the Emmy winner added. Clarke also said she felt “very ashamed” and like she was “broken” after a routine operation to address a second bleed went horribly wrong, as she worried the show’s producers would see her as an “unreliable person that they’ve hired” for the job. After the second surgery, Clarke experienced aphasia – a disorder that impacts a person’s ability to speak or understand speech – as she worried about the security of her job which “centred on language, on communication”. “Without it, I was lost,” she wrote in the first-person essay. Elsewhere in the new interview, Clarke admitted “I might have turned into a right old d***head” if she hadn’t had the brain haemorrhages, “thinking I was the bee’s knees, living in Hollywood”. “I’m so much more aware of what’s happening, in the moment that it’s happening. I don’t worry about failure – I thrive on failure! If something goes wrong, I always think you can fix it. It hurts, it’s scary, but then you can do anything,” Clarke, who co-founded medical charity SameYou for survivors of brain injuries, added. Read More Duchess of York ‘proud’ to launch breast cancer campaign on Loose Women Doctor highlights most commonly misdiagnosed health conditions in women Mom explains how to ‘raise your baby like it’s your third’ Duchess of York ‘proud’ to launch breast cancer campaign on Loose Women Doctor highlights most commonly misdiagnosed health conditions in women Mom explains how to ‘raise your baby like it’s your third’

A professional cuddler who makes a living giving clients hugs has said people travel from all over the globe to receive the cuddle therapy she offers which is “far less intimate than a massage” and helps people from “all walks of life”. Natasha Wicks, 44, from Coventry, West Midlands, says that despite criticism, cuddling is scientifically proven to release happy hormones like dopamine and that a lot of her clients are “the big spoon in life” and go to her for emotional support that they do not have at home. As such, many of her clients are caregivers and most of them join Natasha for two-hour hugging sessions, costing £70 an hour. The sessions vary depending on what the client wants, some having “emotional hugs”, others talking more and some wanting to “sit at opposite ends of the sofa with our legs and feet entwined”. Natasha became a cuddle therapist in 2015 and, while she has had comments online from people criticising the practice, she said that her family and friends were unsurprised when she first started giving professional cuddles. She said: “They all said to me that I give the best cuddles so it’s not surprising that I’d start doing it as a job. “It’s very much what I do, I help people and want to make people feel better. It’s a natural thing when someone is going through a tough time to want to give them a hug. “Cuddle therapy might not be as widely accepted in society but it’s far less intimate than other things like massages which are seen as normal.” Prior to becoming a cuddler, Natasha originally trained as a CBT therapist and counsellor. She said: “There’d be situations where I would be talking to someone and they’d really need a hug, but obviously, you’d have professional boundaries in place and it wouldn’t have been appropriate. “It was just a really natural thing. One client had finished her final session and we had agreed that she wasn’t my patient anymore so we hugged goodbye. She said to me that she’d wanted to do that for a long time and I thought ‘me too’.” Looking into cuddle therapy, which she said was increasing in popularity in 2014, Natasha took a training course. By 2015, she was a qualified cuddler and started taking on new patients for cuddle sessions. Natasha provides a minimum session of one hour but said most people go for at least two hours, sometimes longer if they are receiving more than one type of therapy. She said: “I always give people a hug on the doorstep when they arrive and then they’ll come in and relax, and we’ll have an initial chat about what brings them here. After that, I’ll put on some ambient music and we’ll have a cuddle on my cuddle sofa. “It can be daunting coming into a stranger’s house and I can tell the difference in them from arriving to leaving. The first hug they might be angled away from me but when we’re hugging goodbye, I can get my head in between their neck and shoulders and you can almost feel that a weight has been lifted from them.” There is not one type of person that visits Natasha for cuddles, but she says that a lot of her clients are caregivers. She said: “There’s all sorts of people who come for a cuddle, from people who have moved away from home for the first time and just want a mum hug all the way to people in their 80s. “I’m inclusive of all genders and all ages. I get a lot of clients who are the carers of their family and they are so busy looking after other people, and probably giving the hugs and support to other people, that they don’t have that for themselves. “A lot of people that come to see me are generally people are the big spoon in the life – they take care of others and don’t want to show a vulnerable side to people because they don’t want people to worry that they can’t cope. “I get a lot of carers, a lot of NHS staff, a lot of mums, a lot of people that are in a world where they have to be the strong one in the situation and they just want to be able to come here and let their guard down.” Natasha’s priority is to make people feel at ease when they arrive as she said it can be “nerve wracking” turning up at someone’s house for a hug. Setting out clear boundaries prior to meeting, the therapist has said that the patients she has welcomed into her home have all been respectful. She added: “I always say to people that when your body relaxes, your tummy might crumble and mine might too, but that people don’t need to worry about it. Sometimes people fall asleep and they might snore or fart, it’s just natural things that happen. It’s happened twice where someone has got an erection and that’s fine, I have boundaries and we’ll just change position. “I want people to feel reassured that, as soon as they get in, they feel comfortable.” Despite the unconventional therapy, when Natasha first took on cuddle clients, she said her family were completely “unsurprised” and the step from CBT therapy to cuddle therapy was a “natural evolution”. While Natasha focuses her time on a holistic approach for treating people, she noted that there is also neuroscience behind cuddles. According to the 44-year-old, physical touch activates the brain’s orbitofrontal cortex and cuddling releases oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin. Now, Natasha also does EMDR therapy and is a mental health swim host, and has clients travel from all over the globe to receive her hugs. She said: “Working from Coventry is brilliant because I’m only nine minutes on the train from Birmingham Airport and people come to visit me from all over. I get a client from Belgium, someone from Ireland and people from all over the UK who come to see me. “I wanted to find a sofa bed that just looked like a big comfy sofa for cuddle sessions. I’d started off with a big L shaped sofa but after about five years, it was sagging a bit, there’d been a lot of healing done on that sofa and it was time for a new one. “Now I have a sofa bed in my living room that I use as my cuddle sofa. It’s in the living room and it’s used for everyday life, watching TV with my partner, having people round and also for my work.” Breaking down the taboo around cuddle therapy, Natasha hopes more people will embrace the alternative treatment. She added: “As it’s become more popular, more people are becoming qualified as cuddlers and I think that’s great. “I’ve had comments online before of people thinking it’s weird or not understanding but there are other things we accept in society that are much more intimate than cuddles, like massages. “It’s not weird, it’s actually a really lovely thing to be able to make another soul feel better for a while.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live What is ‘beer tanning’ and why are experts warning against it? Christian Cowan: Designing is like dreaming Deborah James’s daughter launches anniversary clothing line for Bowelbabe Fund

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Kim Kardashian has sparked backlash for posing in an outfit by Balenciaga one year after condemning the brand’s campaign scandal. The reality star, 42, took to Instagram on 13 September to showcase her look from the brand, which she wore to the Kering Foundation’s annual Caring for Women Dinner. Her outfit choice came nearly a year after she said that she was “re-evaluating” her relationship with the brand, due to its controversial campaign of child models holding teddy bears dressed in bondage gear. For Wednesday night’s dinner, she wore a semi-sheer, pink, sparkly dress with a halter neckline and train, along with a pair of nude heels. Along with the series of photos of herself in the outfit, she also shared a snap with Nicole Kidman, who was also wearing a dress by Balenciaga. In the caption, Kardashian quipped: “Caring for women at the Kering Foundation Gala.” On her Instagram Story, the Skims founder shared another snap of herself and Kidman posing together at the dinner, along with the caption: “@balenciaga babes.” Fans have taken to the comments of Kardashian’s Instagram post to question her for publicly working with Balenciaga again after the campaign, which featured an image of a Supreme Court opinion on a child pornography case, was removed due to backlash. “Why are you both wearing Demna again,” one critic wrote, while another added: “But the brand….” A third agreed: “I seriously don’t get it. This is a simple look that she could have commissioned from any brand. I’m here because I’m a fan but this really upsets me.” Social media users have also taken the criticism to a Reddit thread, where one person posted Kardashian’s story with Kidman, and claimed that the reality star’s “outrage” towards the scandal last year “really was performative”. The Reddit user also added that they’d “never view the brand the same” way that they did due to the controversy. “I mean even when people asked her to speak out Kim really made a super neutral and vague statement,” another claimed about Kardashian’s previous remarks. “Not surprised,” a third claimed about Kardashian wearing Balenciaga. “She still supported them like a week or two after the whole incident and then tried hiding that she was wearing them.” Back in November 2022, the KKW Beauty founder first broke her silence about the campaign, noting that as mother of four children – who she shares with ex Kanye West – she was “shaken by the disturbing images” of the advertisements. “The safety of children must be held with the highest regard and any attempts to normalise child abuse of any kind should have no place in our society – period,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, at the time. “I have been quiet for the past few days, not because I haven’t been disgusted and outraged by the recent Balenciaga campaigns, but because I wanted an opportunity to speak to their team to understand for myself how this could have happened.” After she explained that she was “re-evaluating [her] relationship with the brand, basing it off their willingness to accept accountability for something that should have never happened to begin with”, she added that she “appreciated” Balenciaga’s decision to issue an apology and remove the campaign. “In speaking with them, I believe they understand the seriousness of the issue and will take the necessary measures for this to never happen again,” she concluded. One month after issuing the statement, Kardashian explained why she didn’t speak out against the Balenciaga teddy bear controversy at the very beginning. “With the Balenciaga thing, everyone was like: ‘Why aren’t you speaking out? Why aren’t you speaking out?’ And I’m like: ‘Wait. I’m not in this campaign. I don’t know what’s happening. Let me take a minute to research this,’” she said. “And then as soon as I saw what everyone was seeing on the internet and the reality of the situation, I completely spoke out and gave my thoughts on child porn and completely denounced it.” She also made claims about why she believed she faced criticism amid the Balenciaga scandal, continuing: “But because I didn’t say: ‘F*** you, Balenciaga. That’s it,’ people got mad at that. So they’re mad if I don’t speak out. They’re mad if I do speak out, and if I don’t cancel.” The Independent has contacted a representative for Kardashian for comment. Read More Kim Kardashian-West repeatedly tags wrong Mert Alas in Twitter photos with her famous friends Kim Kardashian explains why she doesn't 'label' herself a feminist at Commonwealth club talk Kourtney Kardashian claims she ‘hates’ sister Kim in dramatic Kardashians trailer Cindy Crawford says her father initially thought modelling ‘form of prostitution’ See plus-size model Ashley Graham stun in Old Hollywood-inspired Harris Reed LFW show Football legend Michael Owen: My four kids all have opinions about my fashion choices

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