Maisie Williams has admitted that all of the cast of Game Of Thrones struggled with the spotlight.
During its eight-year run, the fantasy series based on George RR Martin’s books became a TV phenomenon, and rocketed its cast – including Maisie, Kit Harington, Emilia Clarke and Sophie Turner – to global fame.
And Maisie, who was just 12 when she began filming Game Of Thrones, admits that having her mother chaperoning on set and having close friends on set was crucial to coping with life in the spotlight.
The 23-year-old, who played Arya Stark on the show, told the Telegraph: ‘I struggled anyway, really, we all did.
‘But what was so wonderful was that we had so many actors on the show who had been acting for a long time. They gave incredible advice and let me rant on about, “Oh, I feel my words were misinterpreted in this interview.”
‘I was surrounded by people who could tell me, “It just happens, you have to let it go, it’s not a big deal.” That made it all a lot easier.’
Maisie was close in particular with Sophie Turner, who played her sister Sansa on the show, with the pair becoming best friends off set.
The actresses were so tight that they even got matching tattoos reading ’07.08.09’ – the date they both found out they had been cast as Starks.
Game Of Thrones ended last year with a very divisive finale, and with it marked the end of an era in Maisie’s life – with the blockbuster show being only the second thing she ever auditioned for.
She added to the newspaper: ‘There’s always competition, it doesn’t matter how much you’ve done, you will always lose out on roles. The industry is built upon rejection.’
However, while the star admits that it’s difficult learning how to overcome rejection post-GOT, she has plenty more projects to add to her CV.
The actress returned to our TV screens this month in Sky’s Two Weeks To Love, and the long-awaited film The New Mutants – in which Maisie plays Rahne Sinclair – finally hit cinemas in August, but received largely negative reviews.
Maisie also appears in the horror film The Owners, which was released last week in the US, opposite former Time Lord Sylvester McCoy and Rita Tushingham.
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