Tabloid Unearths Past of German Actress

Turkish born, German raised, 23-year-old actress Sibel Kekilli might have been celebrating her Golden Bear win the Berlinale 54th Berlin Film Festival for her role in the award-winning film "Head-On" without a care in the world, were it not for the fact that the 23-year-old actress is embroidered in a sex scandal centered around her porn-laced past.

It seems that German tabloid Bild recently published details about nine pornographic films Kekilli made before she went legit and became a critically acclaimed actress with her clothes on. The newspaper even printed photos from the films of Kekilli in action. These weren't movies a young, naive actress new to the biz did a decade ago -- she is only 23 -- these were as recent as autumn 2002.

"Yes, I did make these (porno) films. But that's the past. What counts is the Golden Bear," Kekilli told Bild. Her family and the media doesn't see it that way; both have condemned her publicly.

"Thanks to the media, she can't even go out of her home. She's totally besieged," Berlinale's director Dieter Kosslick said to Bild.

What's amazing here is that Kekilli was able to get as far as she did without her past coming up. No one involved in the film or the awards raised an eyebrow about her porn background -- and most admit they knew about it -- and she was critically acclaimed until the tabloids dug deep and outed her. In America, she wouldn't have gotten three feet into the casting director's office before someone recognized her, tipped off the casting agents and had her pulled from the picture.

In America, if we give porn stars screen time in mainstream films, it's only minor roles as strippers and, well, porn stars, in mainstream films (Traci Lords and Ron Jeremy being the exceptions). Kekilli woulda been run outta the picture long before she proved to the world that her past was just that and that she actually had genuine talent.

As German actor Mathieu Carriere pointed out, "The fact that Sibel Kekilli had starred in pornos is unimportant. Better to go from pornos to the "Oscar" than the other way round."