[3] Hilal Nebahat Çehre was born to a family from Georgia, on 15 March 1944, in Samsun, a city by the Black Sea in northern Turkey.

While recalling her childhood in interviews, Çehre had described herself as having been an extremely shy and startled little girl.

Çehre also stated that she had been affected by the early death and absence of her father when she was still very young, and that she found it difficult to accept her mother's remarriages.

Çehre married film director and novelist Yılmaz Güney on 30 January 1967, at the Hilton Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey.

A particularly renowned incident that had occurred between Güney and Çehre and which has been described by several individuals who knew them, involves Çehre leaving home and boarding a train with her brother Tayyar without the knowledge of Güney, and going to the northwestern Turkish city of Eskişehir, to visit her relatives.

Upon predicting that the marriage would not continue for a lifetime and taking the instability of their relationship under consideration, Çehre decided that it was best to terminate the pregnancy.

Güney approached the doctor and expressed his wish that nothing of the sort should happen again, should any subsequent pregnancies occur.

[8] Around this time, Çehre met and began a relationship with a basketball player from the Turkish sports club Galatasaray, Yavuz Demir.

I understood that I wasn't going to be able to carry on and keep in step with his fast lifestyle..." Demir died in 2006 and Çehre had attended his funeral.

As Nebahat began running towards the hotel that they were staying at in Elmadağ, Yılmaz hopped into his automobile.

Nebahat flew up into the air, smashed on to the car and then on to the sidewalk... She stayed in hospital for four days.

Even within his last times in Paris, he said, "Abdurrahman, I can't come back to Turkey.

After their divorce, Güney was required to do his compulsory military service in the province of Sivas in Central Anatolia.

Despite their divorce, however, Çehre would reportedly fly to Sivas every week to visit Güney, and Güney would continue to write love letters to her, expressing his sadness and regret of what he had put her through and noting Çehre's remarkable strength as a woman and actress and his everlasting love for her.

Within interviews made during her later life, Çehre would describe that "intense love and passion wears out a relationship...

Despite their divorce, Çehre has described herself as "lucky" and regularly calls Güney her "school" and "teacher", explaining that "I learnt about life and the art of acting from him...

Directly before Güney had escaped to Paris in 1981, he wanted to see Çehre one last time and, when Çehre was set to perform at a casino in Bebek, Istanbul, one evening, as she arrived at the casino, to her great surprise which made her "panic dreadfully", Güney was sitting amongst the audience to see her, alongside his friends.

Initially trying to avoid eye contact while singing on stage, Çehre eventually glanced at Güney, who handed his former wife a flower after she approached him and the two shared an embrace.

Çehre did not attend his funeral, and, despite visiting Paris regularly, frequently suggests that she has never gone to his grave, "I think it's because I want to remember him the last way I had seen him," she said.

In later interviews, Çehre stated that at the time she was still a very young girl who hadn't matured yet, that she had never found herself attractive and that to have been chosen to represent Turkey in the beauty contest greatly surprised her.

Without previously ever having had an interest or desire to work as an actress, Çehre debuted in her first film, Yaban Gülü, or "The Wild Rose", at the age of seventeen in 1962, and also did modelling from this time.

During that year, she was offered to play the leading female role in a film called Kamalı Zeybek, where the renowned Kurdish actor Yılmaz Güney was set to play the leading male role and who had also written the film's scenario script.

Güney, due to his tough posture and actions, earned himself the nickname of "Çirkin Kral" (Ugly King).

Çehre, due to her modelling in the Miss World pageant, was known as "Güzellik Kraliçesi" (Beauty Queen).

[12] Çehre's romantic relationship with Güney also led to a turning point within her own acting career.

Çehre would describe in later interviews, "within the films that I acted in with Yılmaz, I would portray the roles of Anatolian, impoverished women."

Çehre greatly appreciated this due to previously always having been had suited by producers to female characters who were "rich, spoiled and pampered."

Çehre's personal favourite and most notable film with Güney is Seyyit Han (1968), a simple love story amidst economic difficulties of rural life.

At this point Nebahat was crying, trembling and begging the man she loved in tears, 'Yılmaz, it's not possible, I won't do it.

Her singing abilities were first recognised by the prominent Turkish singer, songwriter and music composer, Zeki Müren.