Cahit Irgat

Cahit Irgat — Biography

Cahit Irgat (in full Saffet Cahit Irgat; 21 March 1915, Lüleburgaz – 5 June 1971, Istanbul) was a Turkish stage and screen actor, voice actor, film director and poet. Born in Lüleburgaz, Kırklareli province, in the last years of the Ottoman Empire — sources also give 1914 and 1916 — he trained at the Edirne Teachers' School.

Irgat joined the Istanbul Municipal Theatre in 1940, moved to the Küçük Sahne company in 1951 and to the State Theatres in 1957, later founded his own Oda Tiyatrosu and in 1962 joined the Dormen Theatre. He entered cinema at the end of the 1930s and, over a career of more than three decades, appeared in well over a hundred films, with Turkish catalogues listing more than 140 roles. He often played figures of authority in historical films: Emperor Constantine in The Conquest of Constantinople (1951), Sultan Selim III in Üçüncü Selim'in Gözdesi (1950) and Count Vespasyo in Barbaros Hayreddin Paşa (1951). Drakula İstanbul'da (1952) and Sabahsız Geceler (1968) are among his other notable films. He also worked as a director.

Irgat is also remembered as a poet still read in Turkish literary circles. From his marriage to the scholar and writer Mîna Urgan he had two children, Mustafa and Zeynep. He died in Istanbul in 1971.