I meet Gwendoline Christie on the edge of a professional precipice. It’s March and in a few weeks’ time the final series of Game Of Thrones will start – the beginning of the end of what has become the most successful television programme of all time. I’ve been lucky enough to meet Christie a number of times before, but the glint in her eye seems keener than usual today; her mood is a mixture of apprehension at the end of one thing and excitement about the next phase in her career.

As Christie goes on to explain over a portion of oily Padrón peppers at London’s Little House, Brienne of Tarth wasn’t just an empty character vessel into which she poured her exceptional craft; it’s been a role that has shaped her life both off screen and on. And within. The young and the driven just starting out on their professional acting paths could do worse than use Christie’s portrayal of Brienne as something of a case study in how to strive for originality, how to break their own moulds.

“I was in a car when I found out I got the role,” she tells me about the part that changed her life eight years ago. “I just burst into tears. I’d worked so hard. I had totally transformed myself. I had made a decision to confront a side of my physicality that was more masculine, the scale of my own body and also, perhaps, my own vulnerability. It was tough; I felt I had to step outside my normal self, to look at myself in a different way. Luckily for me, the character I saw in Brienne of Tarth was the first opportunity I had to do just that. I shall forever be thankful.” Trust us, Gwendoline, we are too.

‘I feel deeply emotional about Game Of Thrones ending. It was an act of liberation for me’

Jonathan Heaf: So, thoughts on Fleabag?

Gwendoline Christie: [Laughs.] Excuse me? I’m not in that one, so I don’t know why you’re talking about it.

This is just the preamble, you understand.

I love being interviewed by you, Jonathan, because it is so truly unconventional.

Back to Fleabag. I haven’t seen the first series but I’m three episodes into the second and...

Hold on. You’re three episodes in? You haven’t watched the first series, but still you’re coming in with a strong opinion and want me to give a response in print for GQ? Yeah, sure, whatever you want, darling!

I feel they are overdoing the whole breaking the fourth wall thing somewhat.

I don’t think it’s every single line.

It feels like it.

It’s called a device.

Dress, £860. Boots, £780. Both by Ann Demeulemeester. anndemeulemeester.com © Sølve Sundsbø

Yes, but...

What I feel you’re doing here, Jonathan – and it’s by no means a criticism; I am genuinely fascinated by it – is that you’re not really looking at the overall arc. Perhaps we need to watch the whole of the second series of Fleabag. Perhaps this is about building narrative and perhaps also about someone being forced to confront themselves. It’s about that character looking outside of themselves and being seen by us. No one else recognises her and then the one person that she forms a genuine connection with – the priest – can also see that too.

Sounds plausible. So you have seen it then?

Yes, I’ve seen it. I never said I hadn’t seen it. I’ve watched all of it.

The whole of the second series? [At the time of writing, the third episode of Fleabag has just aired on BBC One.] So you downloaded it illegally or you’re just friends with Phoebe Waller-Bridge?

I haven’t watched all of the second series. I’ve only watched the ones that have been aired on terrestrial television.

I don’t believe you.

No, that’s true.

Did you watch it last night?

Yes, I did, but I was doing something else at the same time so don’t test me on it.

What were you doing that was so important?

I was doing some work actually.

‘We wear a lot of protective layers in order to function in life’

What work were you doing?

Well, I’m doing a play soon...

Shakespeare?

Yes, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s terrifying. So I was going back to basics, going over the plotlines. Often the best thing to do in any situation when you begin is to go back to the foundations of something. It might feel boring at first, but it truly helps. And sometimes if I do that in a very detached way, almost casually, then other things can come to the fore. It frees up the creativity. I did theatre for five years on leaving drama school and I loved it, but since Game Of Thrones I’ve not been back on the stage.

You’re a professional. Why are you so worried?

Because I’ve not done stage work for eight years; because there’s going to be a lot to do. I think it’s actually going to be incredibly physical and that’s come as a surprise. Joking aside, it’s a real luxury to be able to do this again. I’ve been reflecting on the times when I’ve really cried with laughter and they have tended to be during plays. I did a play [Cymbeline, directed by Declan Donnellan] for seven months, when the work was incredibly glitzy and Tom Hiddleston was my son – even though he’s only two years younger than me – and I was the queen and it was an extraordinary experience. But a big reason for doing theatre again is that you’re afforded an opportunity where you don’t necessarily have to problem solve. By that I mean first and foremost you’re being creative. It’s not necessarily having to find creativity; it’s already there. It’s also working the parts of me that have been dormant for a long time.

Which parts of you have been dormant?

Well, I have been acting, of course, but there’s been a lot of other things that have had to run alongside it. You know, the machine. And I think it will be useful to employ those different parts of my mind that are often engaged with strategising or negotiations and diplomacy into a classical test. It’ll just be the acting for a change. Also, I do enjoy anarchy and I do always feel that there’s something anarchic about being let loose on stage. You’re working with the director, but really in that moment anything can happen. You can do whatever you want really.

Coat by Raf Simons, £3,220. rafsimons.com . Earring by Delfina Delettrez, £1,625. delfinadelettrez.com © Sølve Sundsbø

How immediately did you take to acting?

Well, we wear a lot of protective layers in order to function in life; you know all about that. It’s something that progressively has become easier, but I was crippled with shyness as a child and I would often be bright red on the stage. It was actually an excruciating experience when I think about it. It was incredibly difficult and I couldn’t understand why I was putting myself through it. My hands would shake terribly. I would have real stage fright and I would force myself to go on and do it. I think I probably would rather have been in a band.

Really? Lead singer or drums?

Lead singer playing multiple instruments.

So why act?

Acting made me believe that I could be someone else, that I could believe in a different set of circumstances to my own. I really liked doing that. I liked classical work as a child. I was a child freak! I liked that it was so demanding, so disciplined. It evoked so many different thoughts and it would never fail to shock me. I’d be shocked at where my mind would go with them. So I knew I liked that. I knew I liked the discipline of it. But I was at secondary school when I really discovered what I liked. I like dreams. And I like escapism and I loved watching films. But I don’t think I ever thought I was any good. You know, I don’t think I ever enjoyed it. I still question whether I enjoy it today.

Game Of Thrones: what can you tell me?

[Huge mischievous grin. Silence.]

‘For a long time, all I’d really done was cross my legs, wear high heels and do eye rolls’

Fine. How do you feel about it all now it’s finished?

To be really honest with you, I feel a lot of things about it. It’s a very strange state of affairs. I feel deeply emotional about it ending, because it was an act of liberation for me in so many different ways. It really has opened my life up in ways I could never have expected. And in other ways it really shut my life down. I am really excited to do some new things. I am also very scared not to have that structure in place, because it was so reliable. But reliability is not always necessarily a good thing.

What is so wrong with being reliable?

What about spontaneity, Jonathan? In life, I think only the surprises make you really grow. Why keep going round the same track? You won’t learn anything. Genuinely, I cannot believe Games Of Thrones even happened. Truly, I really can’t. And every day I laugh out loud because of it. And I keep saying to people I’m going to retire now and a little part of me thinks it might be better to end it on a high. Do you know what I mean? “She had eight good years and then she died!”

So your character, Brienne of Tarth, does die?

No, I don’t mean that! But I absolutely can’t believe it. And, really, so much is tied up in that part for me; it’s been a true and genuine exploration of self – it really has, in many different ways, and it’s caused parts of me to really, truly come to the fore and to recognise things about myself that I’d never wanted to recognise before.

You mentioned that Game Of Thrones “shut a lot of things down”. What did you mean by that?

Well, it came with what nobody really expected, which was the loss of anonymity. And you can’t ever complain about it. You truly can’t. But it’s strange, because the way I was trained – as an actor – was to observe life at all times and be free. I’ve always had attention; I’m 6ft 3 in. I mean, highly unusual levels of attention have been very present throughout my life since I was probably eleven years old. But being recognised for your association with a TV show that people love: I’d never had that before. And that is wonderful and disconcerting. Because we live in a totally different age now.

‘I went full throttle: I changed my body shape, I subverted everything about who I was’

Fame’s gaze is sharper nowadays?

I think the visibility has increased on absolutely everyone who works in entertainment and the public arena, because we have so many different devices, so everybody has multiple ways of accessing information all of the time and a far more intimate relationship with that information. People love their phones and they’re entertained by it – that small machine can make you cry, laugh, happy, sad, orgasm. It can do multiple things. We’re just very different as a human race now.

You are on social media, though.

I call it Social Medea.

How is your relationship with Instagram?

Weird.

A lot of people in the public eye are not on it, but you are. Something about it must appeal.

I thought I’d always keep a distance from it, but then I was thinking about what I wanted to do and the kind of work I’d like to do post-Game Of Thrones. I’d also like to make my own work, direct and so on, you see? The advice I’d been given was – and this is years ago, back in 2012 – to use these things to create a platform away from any studio or company that was my own so I can bring attention to the projects that wouldn’t normally receive that kind of airtime.

So come on, Game Of Thrones: does everyone die at the end?

Well, I will tell you this: a car alarm goes off throughout the whole series.

That bloody alarm!

By the way, did you watch my fight in series three against Sandor Clegane, known as “The Hound”?

Yes, of course. It’s utterly mesmerising. Traumatic. Exhausting. How did you not break something?

Adrenaline allows you to fall and you ignore the pain. Still, walking backwards uphill wielding a sword is an effort.

Didn’t you train for three months just for that scene?

Yes, but I still got punched in the face – twice. Accidentally, of course. But then I slipped and punched Rory [McCann, “The Hound”] myself.

You punched your costar in the face? Accidentally on purpose?

Not hard! I think I clipped him. I got smacked in the face twice: once with the metal of his armour, the chain mail on the edge. Oh, God, bless him. He is a really kind, generous, wonderful human being. And he was mortified; it was a genuine accident. I fell to my knees and I screamed an expletive. I held my face because I thought my nose was broken. It was agony; it hurt so much. And there was that sort of ringing you get in your ears. But I knew that we had to get this finished, so I stood up and I did something I’d never done before: I stood up and I started spitting. Like an animal, just spitting. I was crying and spitting.

Shrug by Marc Jacobs, £1,530. marcjacobs.com © Sølve Sundsbø

Spitting blood?

Not blood. Just spitting on the floor, like some sort of wrestler about to go back into the fray. There was snot everywhere. I just didn’t feel very in control of my own physicality and I was walking up and down, really crying, and then I said, “Let’s carry on,” because I knew in that moment if I got scared I wouldn’t be able to continue. All the stuntmen rushed in and were absolutely exceptional. But you can’t allow the fear to creep in. You just have to carry on and then use all that pain and rage as best you can.

So you picked yourself up and whacked him on the chin?

No, but he did demand that I punch him in the testicles – for real – because he wanted to feel it.

How method of him. Tell me, what do you think about the woman who started that journey eight years ago compared to the woman you are now?

Finally, an interesting question. We all started with very limited screen-acting experience and a lot of it has been a huge learning process. I had that series four, which was an absolutely amazing summer into winter of working all the time and being really invested in that relationship, doing everything I could to bring it to life, horse riding and sword fighting and all of that work. I absolutely loved it and I think it’s the closest I’ve come to trying to attempt some kind of method experience, which I thought was also interesting with a huge, mainstream TV show. You know, a lot of series two was shock. Just wearing the armour was a huge shock.

The weight of it? How it restricted your movement?

All of it. For a long time, all I’d really done was cross my legs, wear high heels and do eye rolls.

Me too.

It was hugely demanding of me in a very different way. I mean, I went full throttle into it: I changed my body shape, I subverted everything about who I was...

‘I’ve felt pressure to conform, but I’ve also felt a huge overriding desire to reject it’

It was a journey for you as much as for your character?

Precisely. Some of those things I already knew but I just wasn’t brave enough to express them. I often think about the Patti Smith quote, “As far as I am concerned, being any gender is a drag.” And for as long as I can remember I’ve never understood gender norms and I’ve never really understood the meaningless rules that people tell you how to obey these norms. There doesn’t seem to be any good or kindness to it. These norms are serving something that isn’t you and it’s entirely nonsensical. I’ve never really understood why I have to be anything other than endeavouring to try to be a decent person. I’ve felt pressure to conform, but I’ve felt a huge overriding desire to reject it and to refer to how meaningless it is and not to give it any regard. [Any]thing that I don’t feel has served me as a woman, I’ve tried not to spend any time on.

But you must feel proud of the legacy that part will be leaving? The subversion of gender traits?

Well, I think what really translates is that it seems to be about overcoming the obstacle and overcoming the confines of society. Actually, as far as society is concerned, as a woman, that character does not have the attributes that make her attractive, but actually she has another set of attributes that makes her far more enduring. She is doggedly overcoming the obstacles, but also failing. Still, she continues on. She’s utterly determined and focused. At night she fears being attacked, for example. She fears being raped so she sleeps in her armour. So to get into that kind of mindset, someone who has to live in that kind of fear, as a base level, and on top of that is doing everything they can to achieve their ambitions... It was startling, a revelation and a total privilege to play. That sort of thing stays with you. I’ll miss her.

At GQ Heroes, Gwendoline Christie will be interviewed by GQ’s Jonathan Heaf.

+ Next steps

Tune in to Game Of Thrones: The eighth and final series of Game Of Thrones is out now, airing weekly on Sky Atlantic. The previous series are all available to stream. sky.com

See Gwendoline Christie in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Bridge Theatre: bridgetheatre.co.uk

Styling: Jerry Stafford. Hair: Syd Hayes. Make-up: Miranda Joyce. Digital operator: Lucie Byatt. Retouching: Digital Light Ltd. Photography assistants: Jeremy O’Donnell; Simon McGuigan; Samuel Stephenson. Styling assistants: Josie Hall; Joshua Ingate

Download to read the full GQ Heroes issue now

© Sølve Sundsbø

Subscribe now to get six issues of GQ for only £15, including free access to the interactive iPad and iPhone editions. Alternatively, choose from one of our fantastic digital-only offers, available across all devices.

Now read:

Everything you need to know about GQ HEROES

Sam Smith: ‘My hero is Frida Kahlo’

Adwoa Aboah tells us who her hero is