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Sibel Kekilli (born 16 June 1980) is a German actress. She gained public attention after starring in the 2004 film Head-On. She won two Lolas, the most prestigious German film award, for her performances in Head-On and When We Leave (2010). Beginning in 2011, she became more widely known for her role as Shae in the HBO series Game of Thrones.
After successful completion of the training program, she continued to work as an administrative assistant for another two years at Heilbronn city hall, then moved to Essen, where she worked various jobs as a bouncer, cleaner, waitress, nightclub manager, saleswoman, and pornographic film actress.
In 2002, while at a shopping mall in Cologne, she was noticed by a casting director, who invited her to audition for a role in a film. She won the leading part in Head-On () against a field of 350 other hopefuls. The film was released in 2004 and was a major success, receiving several prizes at film festivals. Filming proved strenuous for Kekilli personally, and she underwent an appendectomy during filming in Turkey. Gegen die Wand-Presseheft polyfilm.at, page 6.
Shortly after the release of Head-On, the German tabloid newspaper Bild made public Kekilli's earlier work in pornography. This led to a public sensation, and Kekilli's parents broke off all contact with her. She received the 2004 Bambi prize for "best shooting star" for her role in Head-On. During the televised acceptance speech, she tearfully complained that she was being subject to a " dreckige Hetzkampagne" ("dirty smear campaign") and " Medienvergewaltigung" ("media rape"). Bild-Zeitung was later reprimanded by the Deutscher Presserat (German Press Council) for the manner in which it covered the story.
Kekilli starred in the Turkish coup d'état film Home Coming ( Eve Dönüş) (2006), playing the wife of a man who was unjustly imprisoned and tortured. The performance won her the Best Actress award at the 2006 Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival. Also that year, she played a Jews woman on the way to the Auschwitz concentration camp in the 2006 film The Last Train (). In 2009, she played Umay, a young Turkish woman who leaves Istanbul to return to her family in Berlin, in When We Leave ( Die Fremde). She was awarded the Lola for Best Actress in 2010 for her role. In 2010, Kekilli was cast as Shae in HBO's Game of Thrones, an adaptation of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels.
In 2011, one year after first appearing in a supporting role in the long-running crime series Tatort, she became a permanent cast member as new investigator Sarah Brandt, working alongside chief investigator Klaus Borowski. She said that she was glad not to be playing a character of foreign descent, as she feels she has been typecast in the past. In 2017 she left the Tatort franchise, after 14 feature-length episodes, citing a need for change.
Since citizenship in Germany is primarily established by Jus sanguinis rather than Jus soli, she originally held Turkish rather than German citizenship, and had to apply to the Turkish government when she sought a marriage license (for a planned marriage that ultimately did not take place).
In 2017, Kekilli blocked her Instagram account from being accessed in Turkey, saying that users from that country had sent a multitude of abusive and threatening messages. She denounced the senders as "bigoted, hypocrites and full of hate".
In December 2006, at an anti-domestic violence event run by the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet in Berlin, she stated, in German, the equivalent of "I have experienced for myself that both physical and psychological abuse are regarded as normal in a Muslim family. Sadly, violence is part of the cultural heritage in Islam." In response, the Turkish consul general left the room.
In March 2015 at an International Women's Day event at the President of Germany's residence at Schloss Bellevue, Kekilli gave a speech on violence against women in the name of honour. The speech drew wide attention and praise in Germany for its empathic message. In May 2015, Friedrich Naumann Foundation named Kekilli "Author of Freedom" for the speech.
Personal life
Kekilli lives in Hamburg.
Political activism
Kekilli supports the organization Terre des Femmes in its work against violence against women.
Filmography
Film
2002 Amateure intim (episode eleven) Adult film 2004 Head-On (, ) Sibel Güner 2004 Kebab Connection Italienerin 2006 Winter Journey () Leyla 2006 Fay Grim Concierge First Istanbul Hotel 2006 The Last Train () Ruth Zilbermann 2006 Home Coming () Esma 2009 Pihalla Laura 2010 When We Leave (, ) Umay 2011 What a Man Nele 2012 Die Männer der Emden Salima Bey 2019 Berlin, I Love You Yasil Segment: "Embassy" 2019 Deutschland ist... Heim 2020 Tara Ketabi 2022 Sırma 2025 Yunan TBD Shutdown Sarah Post-production TBD Rostocken Sibel Announced
Television
2010 Gier Nadja Hartmann 2 episodes 2010 Homicide Unit Istanbul Fatma Benli 1 episode 20102017 Tatort Sarah Brandt 14 episodes 20112014 Game of Thrones Shae 20 episodes 2015–2017 Paare Patientin 4 episodes 2016 Inspector Borowski Sarah Brandt 9 episodes 2017 Bruder: Schwarze Macht Sibel 4 episodes 2017 Sesamstraße Sibel 1 episode 2018 Bullets Madina Taburova/Zamira Hoxha 10 episodes 2021 Nina Baselau TV film 2023 Freiheit ist das Einzigste, was zählt Ulli
Awards
External links
Categories: Official, 1980 Births, Living People, Best Actress Golden Orange Award Winners, Best Actress German Film Award Winners, German People Of Turkish Descent, German Pornographic Film Actresses, 21st-century German Actresses, People From Heilbronn, German Television Actresses, German Film Actresses, German Atheists, German Former Sunni Muslims, Actresses From Baden-württemberg
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