Sibel Kekilli was born and raised in Heilbronn, to a family of Turkish origin. Her parents came to West Germany from Turkey in 1977, and were described by Kekilli as fairly liberal.

One day in 2002, while at a Cologne shopping mall, she was noticed by a casting director, who invited her to audition for a role in a movie. Sibel won the leading part in Fatih Akin's "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, however, and she underwent an appendectomy during the filming in Turkey. After the movie, she had a rhinoplasty.

Kekilli starred in the Turkish coup d'état movie "Eve Dönüş," 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 the Auschwitz concentration camp in the 2006 German movie "Der letzte Zug" (The Last Train).

In 2009, she played Umay in Feo Aladag's "When We Leave" (Die Fremde), about a young Turkish woman who leaves Istanbul to return to her family in Berlin.

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 the new investigator Sarah Brandt.

She supports the organization Terre des Femmes in their work against violence in families of Islamic background.

Game of Thrones, German,