See These Game of Thrones Cast Members Before They Were on the Show

By Tessa Trudeau
Apr 22, 2016 @ 6:00 pm
Courtesy of HBO; Alamy Stock Photo (3)

The upcoming season premiere of Game of Thrones has been a hot topic of discussion around InStyle's offices this week. With water cooler chatter ranging from the newly released Season 6 teaser videos, to all things Jon Snow (is he alive or dead?!), we're eagerly anticipating the show’s return. But all this star talk got us thinking: Where were the cast members before they reached the Seven Kingdoms?

We took a look back at our favorite Thrones actors' careers and while many got their big breaks on GoT, a few were Hollywood regulars before landing in Westeros and Essos. We rounded up four Game of Thrones stars with roles worth revisiting—you may be surprised by where they got their starts!

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Natalie Dormer

©Showtime Networks Inc./Courtesy Everett Collection

Dormer, who plays the cunning Margaery Tyrell on Thrones, was best known as the leading lady of Showtime’s The Tudors—she played Anne Boleyn (above) for two seasons before the queen's infamous beheading. Since joining the GoT cast, you've probably spotted the blonde beauty in a number of big films, including Rush alongside Chris Hemsworth, and blockbuster hits The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Parts 1 and 2.

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Peter Dinklage

©New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection

Dinklage's Tyrion Lannister is one of our very favorite Thrones characters—seriously, if he dies, we’re done! His wit, humor, and good heart make him a lovable part of the cast (hey, it’s all relative, right?). But one of Dinklage’s most memorable roles long preceded GoT: his hilarious appearance in Elf back in 2003, the same year he starred in his breakout role in The Station Agent, for which he received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.

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Lena Headey

©Buena Vista Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection

Cersei Lannister is one of the most formidable characters on television. But before this role, Headey played a sweet young lady (hard to imagine now, right?) named Katherine as a lead in the 1994 rendition of children’s classic The Jungle Book (above). She went on to score a starring role in The Brothers Grimm opposite Heath Ledger and Matt Damon, as well as parts in 300 and its sequel, 300: Rise of an Empire.

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Michiel Huisman

Jon LeMay/ABC

This hunk had parts in a number of series before making his Game of Thrones debut in Season 4, when he took over the role of Daario Naharis from Ed Skrein. His pre-GoT roles included a regular spot on HBO series Treme, as well as arcs on Orphan Black and Nashville, on which he portrayed Liam McGuinnis (above), a music producer and love interest to Rayna. And one of our favorites of Huisman’s early projects was the Chanel commercial he starred in with supermodel Gisele Bündchen—talk about major swoon. After his recent lead role opposite Blake Lively in The Age of Adaline, the Dutch star is sure to be a Hollywood fixture for a while.

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