Sibel Kekilli

IMDB PAGE / WIKIPEDIA PAGE

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“After my first audition, the writers changed Shae from how she is in the book, where she was more of a gold digger. But of course, because of where she comes from, She’s always trying to survive, be it using her body or brain. She’s not born with a silver spoon in her mouth. I like these types of characters that come from a broken past. She’s a survivor!”

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ALSO KNOWN FOR

Head-On (2004)

Berlin, I Love You (2019)

When We Leave (2010)

Paare (2016)

Sibel Kekilli is a German actress, born on the 16th of June 1980 in Heilbronn, Germany to a family of Turkish origin. Her parents came to Germany from Turkey in 1977, and were described by Kekilli as having a rather modern and open attitude. After completing school with excellent grades at age 16, she entered a 30-month-long combined training program to become a certified public administration specialist at the local city administration. In 2002, while at a shopping mall in Cologne, she was noticed by a casting director. Beginning in 2011, Kekilli became widely known for her role as Shae in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones.

In 2002, Kekilli won the leading part in Head-On (German: Gegen die Wand) 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. She received the 2004 Bambi prize for "best shooting star" for her role in Head-On. Kekilli then 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 Jewish woman on the way to Auschwitz in The Last Train (German: Der letzte Zug). In 2009, Kekilli 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. Also in 2010, Kekilli was cast as a supporting character named Shae in HBO's Game of Thrones, an adaptation of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels. She remained on the show for the first four seasons.

In 2011, one year after first appearing in a supporting role in the long-running crime series Tatort, Kekilli 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, citing a need for change. Other film and television credits include Kebab Connection (2004), Winter Journey (2006), Pihalla (2009), What a Man (2011), Die Männer der Emden (2012), Berlin, I Love You (2019), and the Finnish crime drama Bullets (2018).