How Old Was Isaac Hempstead Wright When ‘Game of Thrones’ Started?

Isaac Hempstead Wright, Isaac Hempstead Wright game of thrones, Isaac Hempstead Wright game of thrones premiere

Getty Isaac Hempstead Wright attends the premiere of HBO's "Game Of Thrones" season 7 at Walt Disney Concert Hall on July 12, 2017 in Los Angeles, California.

Isaac Hempstead Wright portrayed Bran Stark in the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, just like he did since Season 1. And although he’s not up for a 2019 Emmy, he was still a big part of the final season of the series. Like with the Harry Potter franchise, viewers witnessed the kids of Game of Thrones grow up before their eyes, with Isaac Hempstead Wright going through one of the most striking transformations next to Maisie Williams. So how old was Isaac Hempstead Wright when the show started?


Isaac Hempstead Wright Was 10 When ‘Game of Thrones’ Started

When Isaac Hempstead Wright started on Game of Thrones, he was only 10 years old. Wright was born in 1999, and the Game of Thrones pilot was filmed in 2009. However, production on the remainder of season one started in 2010, and so Wright turned 11 during the first season. (Part of the original pilot was changed to the one we’ve seen today. The original pilot has never been released, but fans hope that maybe it will be released with a DVD compilation after the series is complete.)

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During the second season of Game of Thrones, Isaac Hempstead Wright was 12 years old. During the third season, he was 13. During the fourth season, he was 14. He was not in the fifth season, but by season six, he was 16. Finally, during the filming of the seventh season, Isaac Hempstead Wright was 17 years old.

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Today, Isaac Hempstead Wright is 20 years old. That makes him just a little younger than Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark. Williams is 22 years old.

Here’s a photo of Wright from Season 1 to Season 6:

Isaac Hempstead Wright is one of the youngest of the major characters on Game of Thrones, although the youngest of the Stark children was Rickon Stark, portrayed by Art Parkinson. When the Game of Thrones pilot was filmed, Parkinson was eight years old. So Parkinson had the greatest transformation, but he didn’t appear much on the show. We did see him in Season 7, grown up, but it was a sad reunion in the end.

Because Isaac Hempstead Wright was so young when Game of Thrones began, he says that his parents would not let him watch certain scenes even though he starred in the series. (Of course, he’s watched all of the show since then.)

“My parents were very protective over what I could and couldn’t watch on the series,” he told Phil Star.

He has said that it wasn’t exactly a traumatizing experience to be around so much violence as a kid, as it’s not nearly as scary when you’re there on set and everything looks unrealistic.

“The violence was very much debunked because you’d be walking around on set and there would be decapitated heads or buckets of blood that you’d be taking pictures with,” he told GQ. “So, by the time you watched it, you knew that there was a guy pumping blood out of the body from behind the stone. The sex was a little more difficult, but my mom just gave me equally inappropriate talks of it.”

Wright also told GQ that even though he’s spent much of his life on Game of Thrones, he is able to compartmentalize and have another life outside of the work.

“The show doesn’t dominate my life in the way that lots of people think it does,” he said. “Because I was doing it from so young, it just became this thing I would do in the second half of the year — a little something that I’d do on the side.”

Wright told W Magazine that he feels like he’s lived an entire life even though he’s really just starting his life. When he first started, he hadn’t even heard of HBO because he was from a small village in an English countryside. He said it wasn’t until he took a break in Season 5 that he realized just how big the show is. He tried to go to college and he was assigned his own police officer. What will he do differently when he goes to college next time? Wright told W: “Not staying in the dorms—that was definitely a major error.”

Wright told Gulf News that his address at college actually got published. “My university address got published in the press, which meant that every time I walked out of my halls pretty much I would have to do a selfie with someone. That’s the last thing you want at nine in the morning when you’re trying to go to a maths lecture.” 

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With the series over, Wright told Gulf News that he wants to keep acting ultimately, but he also wants to go back to college (for real this time.)

Bran Stark has experienced a lot of changes over the years — and so has Wright.