Jale Arıkan

Jale Arıkan — Biography

Jale Arıkan was born on 22 August 1965 in Istanbul; at age six, in 1971, she moved to Germany with her family, and growing up there she chose cinema as a way to portray the experiences of Turkish women in Germany. After three years of private theatre training, she began her film career in the late 1980s with Die Heimreise (Vatan Yolu) and Der Geschichtenerzähler, and went on to roles in German series such as Wolffs Revier and Tatort. In 1996 she played Naomi opposite Elizabeth Hurley and Dennis Hopper in the television film Samson and Delilah, and in 2005 she starred in the Luxembourgish film Your Name Is Justine, which was submitted for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Through the 2000s and 2010s she worked on both German and Turkish productions, including Soundless, Evet, ich will!, Zenne and Es ist böse, and played Behice on Turkish television in the series Veda. For her role in the 2012 film Zerre she won the Silver George for Best Actress at the 35th Moscow International Film Festival in 2013 and Best Actress at the Frankfurt Turkish Film Festival in 2014; Zerre itself received the festival's top prize, the Golden George. She has continued working in projects such as Kaçış, Kerr and İdea.