Emilia Clarke Says She’d ‘Love’ to Direct ‘Down the Road’: ‘I Have a Lot More Acting Left in Me’

Emilia Clarke is open to trying new things in her career.

While chatting with PEOPLE about her new partnership with Pegasus Distillerie, the actress, 37, also opens up about directing, though she admits it’s not something she’s rushing into just yet.

“Oh my goodness, down the road, for sure,” Clarke says of stepping behind the camera. “It’s something I would love.”

“I mean, my favorite thing is to help people put themselves on tape, for auditions. I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it.’ I love it. I absolutely love it,” she continues. “Right now, though, I feel like I have a lot more acting first left in me.”

Adds the Game of Thrones alum: “The thing about being a director is you need to take out two years of your life to just solely do that one thing. And I’m like, ‘Yeah, but I’d kind of want to be acting more than I’d wanted to be directing right now.’ But I would love for that to be where my career ends up. That’d be amazing.”

Clarke rose to fame playing Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones — the HBO show based on the series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin that ran for eight seasons from 2011 to 2019.

Alongside Clarke, others who starred heavily in the series included Lena Headey, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Kit Harington, Peter Dinklage, Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams and Isaac Hempstead Wright, to name a few.

During the show’s run, Clarke was nominated for four Emmys — in the outstanding supporting actress in a drama series category in 2013, 2015 and 2016, and in the outstanding lead actress in a drama series category in 2019.

Some of Clarke’s other big projects include the films Terminator Genisys, Me Before You, Solo: A Star Wars Story and Last Christmas. She also recently starred on the Marvel TV miniseries, Secret Invasion.

Clarke has a few upcoming projects lined up, per her IMDB page, including McCarthy, An Ideal Wife, The Queen of Fashion and The Twits.

When asked what she is looking for career-wise, the actress tells PEOPLE, “Honestly, I’m so director driven right now.”

“So it’s more the people that I want to work with, rather than the individual character or thought or idea first,” she continues.

Noting that if she can “find a director that I creatively admire and someone I can learn from,” Clarke says, “That’s kind of the goal.”

“Then it doesn’t really matter what the role is, you just get to experience and learn from someone who’s a creative idol,” she adds. “That’s the dream. That’s what I’m striving for.”