Clarke: “As an actor, you’re always observing – no matter what trauma you’re going through, there’s a wee bit of your brain that’s like, ‘Isn’t this fascinating?’”

Clarke: “I finally got this feeling. As if, on a cellular level, I’d grown up. And it’s so bittersweet, because I was clinging on to that childlike optimism. Then, when I finally let it go, I realised that was actually quite a heavy backpack to be wearing. I felt like that at the Emmys, too, finally popping my head up from the bunker. It’s as if you can see the actual landscape that you’ve been living in this entire time from another perspective.”

Clarke: "Drama school is fundamentally practical. I didn't write any essays, so I came out with a BA honors degree in acting."

[On how she deals with her near-death stroke experience]

Clarke: "By realising that there is a framework that life lives within, and knowing when you reach the edges of it. There’s that. And I try to use the sh*t feelings as opposed to just ‘breathing through it’. It’s like putting my plastic in the recycling bin – it might not do anything, but I should at least try. And then being an actor and having a production company, knowing that the greater understanding I have about life, the greater storyteller I can be."

Clarke: "A young Brit girl with no theatre experience decided to take on an iconic American role on Broadway. Maybe I should have thought that through?"

Clarke: “You know, I spent a lot of time being like, ‘What I do is all bullshit. I’m completely selfish, a total narcissist.’ And then I realised what it was for. I help provide relief. And that’s worth something, especially now.”

Clarke: "Don’t do drugs, don’t have sex, and don’t touch your eyebrows."

Clarke: “We don’t look at grief properly. I’m not talking about the random moments of completely overwhelming emotion, I’m pretty in control of that… there was only one time on set where I just physically couldn’t stop crying. It’s the other stuff that we don’t discuss – the functional grief; when your worldview and your perspective on life and yourself changes irrevocably, forever.”

Clarke: "I told my parents I wanted to be an actor, and they were getting ready for a life of unemployment, so they're just happy I'm in work!"

Clarke: "One of the first houses we lived in was like out of a fairy story. We had a stream that ran through our garden, and we played with the ducks - we locked them in my mum's office, and they pooed everywhere. It was crazy, picking blackberries and mushrooms, rabbits running through your legs."

Clarke: "If you spend too much time wondering what you're going to feel like in year five, you're not going to feel anything in year one."

Clarke: "When I told my dad I wanted to be an actress, he replied that there was only one line I needed to learn: 'Do you want fries with that?'"

Clarke: "I was at a Golden Globes after-party and Channing F*cking Tatum came up to me, and his stunning missus, Jenna. And they said, 'We call each other 'moon of my life' and 'my sun and stars' and all that.' And I was like, 'I cannot contain this. Please, can we all have something sexual together? You're both beautiful, even just a hug.'"

Clarke: "I find that a lot of the good acting comes out when you're physically being pushed: your brain turns off and just deals with the situation at hand. You get to a point where you're exhausted at the end of the day, but I quite like that."

Clarke: "Personally, I'd like as many children as I can pop out, I reckon."

Clarke: "I care about what art does to people. But it carries with it a responsibility, and when you leave your front door you take that with you. And it’s a difficult path to navigate."

Clarke: "My life is unrecognisable compared to what it was - 'Game of Thrones' has opened doors that were never there before. But it can be dangerous to see it in those terms, I think. It's best to take it as it comes and work as hard as you can, and hopefully the other things fall into place."

Clarke: "I spent most of my life watching HBO series wishing that at some point in my career I might be able to work with them."

Clarke: “The world is scary at the moment, both politically and environmentally. You have politicians pushing people to the absolute limits of their left versus right parameters, and the middle ground that we were all living in before is now wasteland, because both sides are life or death. It feels so much more polarised and extreme than ever. You’ve got 33-year-olds like me asking, ‘Should I bring kids into this world? If I do, what will that kid feel like?’ It feels frightening, consistently. And I’m not alone. I’m leaning hard on Bake Off right now.”

Clarke: "My father always said, 'Never trust anyone whose TV is bigger than their book shelf' - so I make sure I read."

Clarke: "All of the press and stuff - that's the scary stuff. The acting is what I got trained to do."

Clarke: "When I was in my teens, I thought, 'Would I like to try and work hard at being an actor, or do I want to work hard at doing something musical?' Acting won out, but I do really enjoy those moments where I get to just belt something out."

Clarke: "No talent lies in my dancing."

Clarke: "My dad took me for an audition once, to show me, 'OK, you want to be a child actor, this is what it's like.' I sang a folk song about donkeys on this West End stage with this big director, and there was a queue of 200 girls all singing 'Memory.' I was terrible. Terrible."

Clarke: "I looked around one stage school when I was maybe nine. It just scared the bejesus out of me. I was incredibly open, and the girls seemed fierce and determined."

Clarke: “It can be perceived as such a feminine trait, can’t it – the responsibility to ‘put a smile on it.’”

Clarke: "After my last audition for 'Game of Thrones,' they said, 'Congratulations, princess.' I was like, 'Bye-bye, call centre.'"

Clarke: "I am so not a fashionista. I walk into those parties, and I'm like, 'Hey, guys!' Everyone's looking really cool, sipping on some mental cocktail, and I'm like, 'Can I have a cup of tea?' Such an idiot."