Emilia Clarke Changes Rules for Fans After Panic Attack

Emilia Clarke said she was walking through an airport when a panic attack, brought on by exhaustion, struck. "I was on my own, I was on the phone to my mum saying, 'I feel like I can't breathe, I don’t know what's going on,'" the actress said. "'I'm there and the tears are coming out. I’m crying and crying, this guy's like, 'Can I get a selfie?'" After that, Time reports, Clarke rethought her interactions with fans and decided she won't be posing for selfies with them anymore. Instead, she'll sign something for people who approach her. "When you do that, you have to have an interaction with that person, as opposed to someone just going, 'Oi, give us a selfie, goodbye,'" she explained on the Table Manners podcast.

A fan once woke her up on a plane for a selfie, the Game of Thrones star said, per NBC. Clarke said she realizes it's all part of being a public figure but still misses being unknown at times. Signing something, she hopes, will provide a more meaningful interaction for her and fans. "Then you have a chat and you’re actually having a truthful human-to-human thing," she said, "as opposed to it being this other thing." (Clarke wrote about two previous health scares.)