Sibel Kekilli

Sibel Kekilli — Biography

Sibel Kekilli was born on 16 June 1980 in Heilbronn to parents who had emigrated from Kayseri to West Germany in 1977; after finishing school with strong grades she trained as a civil-service clerk before working as a waitress, nightclub manager and saleswoman, a period that also included a brief stint in adult films. Spotted by chance at a shopping mall in 2002, she was cast in the lead of Fatih Akin's Head-On from a field of 350 candidates; after the film's 2004 release the tabloid Bild exposed her pornographic past, prompting a public scandal, a break with her family, and a formal reprimand of the paper by the German Press Council -- yet the role still won her a Lola. She won Best Actress at the 2006 Golden Orange for Home Coming, then took a second Lola and the Tribeca Best Actress prize in 2010 for When We Leave. From 2011 she gained international recognition as Shae in Game of Thrones, and went on to play detective Sarah Brandt in the Kiel editions of Tatort until 2017. An advocate against violence toward women who works with the group Terre des Femmes, she blocked her Instagram account from Turkey in 2017 after receiving abusive and threatening messages from users there. In May 2026 she married writer Andreas Daurer in a quiet ceremony.