Since it premiered on HBO in the spring of 2011, Game of Thrones has become a worldwide
smash.
Many stars of the show have skyrocketed to fame, but over the course of making the series,
they've also encountered some unexpected hardships.
Here's a look at some scary, tricky, and grueling sacrifices actors had to make for Game of
Thrones.
In her years of playing Sansa Stark, Sophie Turner has endured arranged marriages, sexual
violence, and the loss of loved ones.
Though Sansa began the show as a spoiled child who wanted nothing more than to be a princess,
she has grown into a shrewd warrior.
Turner hasn't personally been through the horrors that Sansa has, but she's endured
her fair share of difficulties, including an unhygienic request.
After Sansa escaped from King's Landing, Turner was asked to stop washing her hair so she
would look as disheveled as possible during Sansa's darkest times.
It wasn't an enjoyable experience for Turner.
She said:
"It was really disgusting.
Now I wear a wig so I can wash my hair whenever I want, which is nice.
But yes, for a couple of years I was living with pretty greasy hair."
One of the show's all-time hardest scenes to watch has to be the Red Wedding near the
end of the third season.
Robb Stark betrays his promise to marry the daughter of one of his allies, Walder Frey.
So the Freys slaughter Robb, his pregnant bride Talisa, and his mother Catelyn.
None of the actors involved in the Red Wedding were particularly excited about filming the
sequence, but Oona Chaplin, who played Talisa, had it really bad.
After her pregnant character is repeatedly stabbed in the stomach, she's left on the
floor to torment Robb.
Chaplin spent hours laying on a floor in a cold Belfast studio.
She was "freezing" and covered in fake blood, while she waited for the rest of the cast
to finish their scenes.
Chaplin's commitment can't be understated.
In the seventh season of Game of Thrones, several characters who hadn't yet met came
together, with varying results.
When Daenerys Targaryen met Jaime Lannister for the first time, it didn't go very well.
During their battle, Bronn, Jaime's right hand man, must operate an enormous spear
launcher to fight against Daenerys' dragon, Drogon.
Though Bronn does get one good hit in against Drogon, the machine is quickly burned to ashes.
Bronn survives, but gets caught in the flames.
Drogon spends most of the scene setting fire to the battlefield.
All the actors had to contend with smoke inhalation, but Jerome Flynn, who plays Bronn, got the
worst of it.
Director of photography Robert MacLachlan burned diesel oil for dramatic black smoke.
Most of the crew wore masks.
Flynn had to go unmasked, and it's hard to miss the discomfort visible on his face.
The Battle of the Bastards, which took place during the show's sixth season, was the culmination
of a long chain of events.
That included Jon Snow's reunion with his sister Sansa, her escape from her sociopathic
husband Ramsay Bolton, and the long-awaited showdown among them all.
As with many battles on Game of Thrones, each moment is more brutal than the last, and throughout
the fight, it seems unlikely that Jon Snow will emerge victorious.
At one point, he ends up submerged in a pile of dead bodies and living soldiers, gasping
for breath as he struggles to rise to the surface, which reportedly terrified actor
Kit Harington, who plays Snow.
He didn't enjoy this part of filming, as being crushed is one of his biggest fears.
He gave up his own comfort to create a singular moment for viewers.
Speaking of Ramsay Bolton, when viewers met the character, played by Iwan Rheon in season
three, he was a bastard, much like Jon Snow.
When he helped his father, Roose Bolton, secure the North, he was made an official Bolton
in his own right.
After watching Ramsay generally be the worst person of all time, fans were thrilled when
Ramsay met a bitter and bloody end in the aftermath of the Battle of the Bastards.
It was especially satisfying to hear him being torn apart by his own pack of angry attack
dogs.
"They’re loyal beasts."
"They were.
Now they’re starving."
But before that goes down, once the larger battle ends, Jon and Ramsay find themselves
back at Winterfell ready to keep fighting.
Jon snaps and brutally beats Ramsay into submission.
However, some of this ended up becoming a reality for Rheon, who was actually punched
in the face twice by Harington.
Harington said Rheon was extremely nice about the situation, but it's unlikely that Rheon
was thrilled about taking two for the team.
Since debuting on the show during season two, Brienne of Tarth, played by actress Gwendoline
Christie, has won audiences' hearts with her fierce battle skills, unerring loyalty, and
quick quips.
After serving a few fallen characters including Catelyn Stark, Brienne strikes up a real friendship
with Jaime Lannister.
Between her bond with the Kingslayer and her continued devotion to Catelyn, Brienne has
become a fan favorite.
As such, fans are always frightened when Brienne ends up in a life-threatening situation.
When Brienne and Jaime are captured and held hostage by Locke, a hunter for House Bolton,
Locke forces Brienne to face down a real bear in a fighting pit, causing Jaime to jump in
and rescue her.
Although Christie said the bear was a "diva," requiring its own trailer, she also said that
it was terrifying to face down the giant animal with nothing more than an electric fence between
them.
"And you believed them?"
"Why do you think I look so scared?"
Few of Thrones' villains have elicited a public reaction quite as visceral as Joffrey Baratheon,
the sadistic eldest son of Cersei Lannister.
A bitter, violence-hungry child born of incest, King Joffrey's vengeful and ill-advised decision
to execute Ned Stark in the show's first season set off most of the entire story's conflict.
"So long as I am your king, treason shall never go unpunished.
Ser Ilyn, bring me his head!"
Viewers have watched him murder prostitutes sex workers, threaten to beat women, and verbally
abuse pretty much everyone.
It's no wonder viewers loved watching Joffrey get slapped.
He meets an extremely ugly end early in the fourth season.
During his wedding to Margaery Tyrell, Joffrey takes a final sip of wine, gruesomely choking
to death in front of the entire court.
Actor Jack Gleeson quit acting after his last moments as Joffrey.
He said that aside from the choking itself, keeping his eyes open was the hardest part.
They actually had to be held open so he didn't blink, making filming the scene that much
more uncomfortable.
Cersei Lannister, yet another Thrones character that viewers love to hate, has committed her
fair share of atrocities.
Y'know, stuff like enabling her evil son Joffrey, carrying on a decades-long affair with her
twin brother, and slaughtering most of King's Landing by burning them with wildfire.
She got her just desserts for some of her crimes at the end of the show's fifth season,
when she was forced to take a walk of atonement through King's Landing completely naked while
the townspeople verbally and physically abused her.
The walk was shot in Dubrovnik, Croatia near an ancient church.
The production was nearly banned, however, due to the nudity.
In the end, actress Lena Headey asked for a body double.
Thanks to the magic of visual effects, Rebecca Van Cleave's body stood in for Cersei's.
Van Cleave spent three days walking the streets of Dubrovnik completely naked while crew members
and extras shouted and pelted her with food.
Van Cleave’s face was never shown.
After a number of shocking deaths throughout Thrones' run, viewers have accepted the idea
that nobody is safe, which made Jon Snow's false start of a death all the more horrifying.
During the season five finale, Jon, now the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, is betrayed
by his men and repeatedly stabbed over accusations of treason.
The show cuts to black, leaving anxious fans without answers regarding Jon's fate until
the next season premiere.
Actor Kit Harington told various media outlets he would not be returning to the show, which
turned out to be a pretty enormous lie.
Jon was alive and well by the second episode of the next season.
Harington reportedly hated lying.
With huge fans like President Barack Obama concerned about Jon Snow's fate, Harington
had to play it extremely safe for over a year.
He did get himself out of a speeding ticket by revealing one of the show's biggest spoilers
to an anxious police officer, so at least there was one silver lining to this sacrifice.
"I looked at him and went, 'I’m alive next season,' and he goes, he says, 'Mmm-hmm.
On your way, Lord Commander.'"
Throughout Game of Thrones' run, Arya Stark has transformed from a young, impetuous would-be
warrior to a truly dangerous faceless assassin.
After watching her father's public execution and making the journey from Westeros
to the House of the Undying in Braavos, she agrees to learn from the mysterious face-changer
Jaqen H'ghar.
She waits outside the House for days to earn her place inside.
As soon as Arya learns how to change faces, she uses her power to kill Meryn Trant.
Because it wasn't yet Meryn's turn to die, Arya is punished by Jaqen, who blinds her
and forces her to live as a beggar.
While blind, Arya's eyes are clouded.
Unfortunately for actress Maisie Williams, her contacts were quite thick and hand-painted,
actually obscuring her vision.
Williams admitted that while she didn't want to complain, her blind scenes left her in
a significant amount of pain.
She stuck with it, ensuring that each shot during Arya's blind phase was exactly right.
Theon Greyjoy, the once cocky heir to the Iron Islands, has been through his fair share
of ordeals.
Once a young, stubborn ward of the North, Theon was initially loyal to Robb Stark in
the wake of Ned's death.
Eventually, he betrayed Robb and was captured by the sadistic Ramsay Bolton, who physically
and psychologically destroyed Theon until he referred to himself as "Reek."
Perhaps the hardest scenes for actor Alfie Allen to endure throughout Thrones were his
torture scenes with Ramsay.
He spent most of a full season strung up, savagely mutilated and beaten.
It can't have been easy for Allen to even pretend to be tortured, and he has since spoken
out about how hard it was to play.
He watched movies that prominently featured torture, including Quentin Tarantino's bloody
classic Reservoir Dogs.
Spending so much time working within this unflinchingly terrible part of Theon's story
must have been incredibly difficult for Allen.
Some viewers might have forgotten about Lancel Lannister, played by Eugene Simon.
When audiences meet a younger Lancel, he is a seemingly innocent squire to King Robert
until the monarch's death.
After an ill-advised affair with his cousin Cersei, which is somehow not the grossest
relationship she has in the show, Lancel is severely wounded in season two's Battle of
Blackwater Bay and shunted to the sidelines.
When Lancel returns, he's joined an oppressive and severe religious sect called the Sparrows.
When Lancel spills the beans about his relationship with Cersei, she gets angrier than ever.
Rather than attend her own trial, the vengeful Queen Mother unleashes a magical wildfire
throughout King's Landing, killing numerous people.
Lancel, sent to find the missing Cersei during her trial, discovers her plan.
He can't stop the explosion in time, despite his best efforts.
Simon spent hours crawling through a dark dungeon, enduring the journey a whopping 27
times until they got the shot right.
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