Kekilli’s entry into entertainment was clandestine and born of economic necessity. After moving to Berlin as a young adult, she worked various jobs before entering the adult film industry around 2001–2002, performing in roughly a dozen hardcore films. This period, later weaponized against her, was initially a secret. The revelation of her past by the German tabloid Bild in 2004, just as she was gaining mainstream recognition, was a quintessential media scandal. The coverage was lurid, moralizing, and deeply gendered, framing her as a deceptive “fallen woman” rather than a worker navigating a precarious labour market.