Emilia Clarke

Expect to see rather a lot of Emilia Clarke in the near future. One year out of Drama Centre London and, after filming the SyFy Channel film Fossils last autumn, she was cast as Daenerys in Game Of Thrones, the HBO adaptation of George RR Martin’s fantasy series A Song Of Ice And Fire which shoots from July. She plays the female lead who grows from being a submissive, vulnerable teenage orphan to a powerful independent woman - and it is a role that will propel her into the international spotlight. But she will not just have to ensure that nerves do not get the better of her playing opposite the likes of Sean Bean and Iain Glen -“I’ll immerse myself so much into the character that I won’t have time to get starstruck,”she says - for the production has already got the internet messageboards heaving with excitement. “I don’t want to disappoint,” she says.