Özcan Deniz

Özcan Deniz — Biography

Özcan Deniz was born on 19 May 1972 in Ankara to a Kurdish family with roots in Ağrı, and is a nephew of the celebrated Kurdish singer Şakiro. His family moved to Aydın when he was five, where he ran an amateur theatre troupe and developed an interest in music, becoming one of the region's sought-after orchestra soloists by 1985. After Istanbul he went on to Germany, where he was discovered by producers in Munich; he entered the music scene with the 1992 album Yine Ağlattın Beni and broke through a year later with Meleğim.

His real breakthrough as an actor came playing the lead in 2002's Asmalı Konak, building on the profile he had gained a year earlier with the album and series Yalan mı. Television took him through Haziran Gecesi, Kader, Karagül, İstanbullu Gelin and Kızıl Goncalar; behind the camera, he directed Ya Sonra in 2011, and he later wrote, directed and starred in Evim Sensin, then took on the same triple role for Su ve Ateş. He has released numerous further albums, including Çoban Yıldızı, Leyla and Bi Düşün.

He has married three times: he divorced Handan Deniz, whom he had married in Germany in 1992, in 2003; his marriage to Feyza Aktan, mother of his son Kuzey, ended in divorce in 2019 after they wed in 2018; and he married Iranian-born Samar Dadgar in 2023. He has also taken part in social-responsibility campaigns with organisations including the Kidney Foundation and WWF.