The fifth season of Game of Thrones is officially over on Sunday night and here at JustLuxe, we’re heartbroken. It’s going to be a long summer without that emotionally abusive show haunting our dreams—what are we going to talk about Monday on mornings now? We can only hope that the break will pass swiftly, because we’re already excited to see what season six has in store, especially considering author George R.R. Martin won’t be contributing any scripts this time around—he really needs to finish The Winds of Winter before HBO runs out of source material. Much like we did a few years ago with Peter Dinklage, we decided to celebrate the fifth season’s closing by learning all we could about the show’s dragon-riding badass Daenerys Stormborn AKA Emilia Clarke. 

• Emilia Clarke was born on October 26, 1986 (we’re birthday buddies, no big deal) in London, though she mostly grew up in the Berkshire countryside. Though she looks pretty imposing on the show, the 28-year-old actress is actually only 5’2”. She studied drama at the Drama Centre London, which was also attended by Paul Bettany, Colin Firth, Michael Fassbender, and Tom Hardy. Clarke graduated in 2009.

• Clarke can sing, play the piano, flute, and the guitar. She’s also apparently really good at singing alto, ballads, cabaret, and jazz. Oh yeah, and reggae.
• When she was just 16 years old, Clarke backpacked through northern India so she could scatter the ashes of her Delhi-born grandmother.

• Her very first on-screen role came in the form of the above 2009 advert for the Samaritans charity. Playing a trouble young girl named Lisa, Clarke doesn’t actually have any lines, but she certainly doesn’t need them. 

• She appeared in her first television role that same year in BBC’s Doctors. Check out the above clip where she tells her dad off, because no one dares stalk Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen. Also, what is with this girl and uncomfortable familial relations? 

• Clarke made her film debut in the made-for-TV movie Triassic Attack, which aired on the SyFy channel in 2010. Sure, it has a 3.1/10 score on IMDB, but we’d consider checking it out to see Dany go head-to-head against murderous dinosaur fossils.

• Originally, Tamzin Merchant (The Tudors) was cast as Daenerys and even filmed the pilot episode. Though no reasons have been given as to why she was replaced, author George R.R. Martin has said in the past that it had nothing to do with Merchant’s performance.

• According to Marie Claire, it was when she was holding down six jobs to pay rent (including bartending and working at a call center) that she scored the audition for Game of Thrones. With only 24 hours to prepare for her audition, she “called in sick to [her] catering job and Wikipedia-ed the crap out of it.” She found out that she got the part four days later. Last year she shared the story on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, in which she laughed about show runner David Benioff’s joking suggestion that she do a dance at the end of her very dramatic audition. So, naturally, Khaleesi did the funky chicken, which transitioned into the robot. 

• She made her Broadway debut in 2013 as Holly Golightly in Richard Greenberg’s stage adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She reportedly suffered a brain aneurysm after the production finished and was treated at New York Presbyterian. There’s no word on whether this is true, since both Clarke and HBO declined to comment on the incident. 

• Naturally a brunette, in 2013 Clarke told GQ that she loves the blonde wig she dons for GoT and wishes she were allowed to wear it casually. “I keep asking to go out with the wig at night, but they insist there’s no way. They won’t let me go partying with it on! I would be killed on the spot,” she told the magazine. “It’s silly to say, but when I take the wig off at the end of the day, I’m rather disappointed when I look in the mirror.” We have a hard time believing that, for obvious reasons. 

• She may like the wig, but it must be nice to be able to stroll down the street without being instantly recognized. In fact, even diehard GoT fan Richard Shepard (her director in Dom Hemmingway) didn’t recognize her without the platinum wig on when she auditioned for the movie. “I didn’t recognize her, because she didn’t have her wig,” he told Page Six last year. “I’m literally like, ‘What have you been doing lately?’ And she [said], ‘Oh, I’ve been doing this show.’ ” To which he asked, “Oh? What’s the show?” Embarrassing. 

• Fifty Shades of Grey would have been a very different movie had Clarke taken the role of Anastasia Steele when the studio offered it to her. The actress told Hollywood Reporter that she turned it down because of the nudity required, saying, “I'd done nudity before and was concerned with being labeled for doing it again.” She added that she doesn’t have any regrets at all.

• People may be in awe of her fierce eyebrows now, but Clarke was bullied about them when she was a kid. Her mom apparently gave her a few hard rules to live by when she was young: don’t ever do drugs, don’t have sex, and don’t touch the eyebrows.

• Like every other warm blooded woman on the planet, she also loves Ryan Gosling, calling him her “favorite person on the planet.” "I don't know him," she told Marie Claire. "I've just read this interview where I'm like, 'Okay, you're now officially beautiful and intelligent.'"
• She loves HBO’s hit series Girls, telling GQ, “I’d give my right arm to be […] a random extra on Girls, just to walk past one of the scenarios.”

• Of course, people can’t get enough of her love life. Clarke threw fans off when she started dating Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane a few years ago. Unfortunately, after six months, the two split in 2013 due to location conflicts with him being based in Los Angeles and her spending most of her time shooting in Europe. For a brief time she was linked with GoT co-star Richard Madden (RIP Robb Stark) and last year tabloids were pretty certain she was dating Kit Harington (Jon Snow). There have also been past rumors that she’s dated James Franco and her Breakfast at Tiffany’s co-star Cory Michael Smith. More recently, she and Australian actor Jai Courtney (her Terminator Genisys co-star) are apparently an item. 

• Not only is she the Mother of Dragons, she’s also the Mother of Slugs. In 2013, a new species of sea slug was discovered by marine biologists off the coast of Brazil and aptly named “Tritonia khaleesi.” According to Huffington Post, the scientists who found the slugs (Felipe de Vasconcelos Silva, Victor Manuel De Azevedoa and Helena Matthews-Cascona) were apparently reminded of Clarke’s character because of the nudibranch’s appearance. “The strand of silver on the back of the slug is reminiscent of Khaleesi's braids of silver hair […]. Besides its silver color, the species is one of the smallest sea slugs, just as Khaleesi is described (in the books) as small and juvenile.” 

• Though it will seem like a lifetime before the new season of Game of Thrones comes back, you will still get some Clarke time in during the break. She plays the iconic role of Sara Conner (made famous by Linda Hamilton) in the reboot of the Terminator franchise, with Terminator Genisys being released July 1—the flick also stars Arnold Schwarzenegger (obviously), J.K. Simmons, Matt Smith, and Jai Courtney.