Türkân Şoray

Türkân Şoray — Biography

Türkan Şoray was born on 28 June 1945 in Istanbul's Eyüpsultan district, the first child of a civil-servant family; her father was of Kabardian Circassian descent and her mother's side had emigrated from Thessaloniki, and she has two sisters, Nazan and Figen. While attending Fatih Girls' High School, she visited a film set with a neighbour's daughter who would later become a well-known actress herself, and, encouraged by Türker İnanoğlu, entered Yeşilçam, taking a leading role in her first film in 1960.

Known as the Sultan of Turkish cinema, Şoray is regarded, alongside Fatma Girik, Hülya Koçyiğit and Filiz Akın, as one of the four leading actresses of the Yeşilçam era, and is the only one of the four who also took up directing; with 222 film credits, she holds the record for the most feature films by a female actor worldwide. She was named Best Actress four times at the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, won the grand jury prize at the Moscow Film Festival for her directorial debut, took Best Actress awards at the Tashkent and Bastia festivals, received honorary awards from the Istanbul and Rome film festivals, and is a member of the Eurasian Academy.

She married actor Cihan Ünal in 1983 and separated in 1987, with whom she has a daughter, Yağmur. Named a State Artist in 1991, she became a UNICEF goodwill ambassador for Turkey in 2010, published an autobiography in 2012, and announced her retirement from acting in 2018. In recent years she has turned to painting, exhibiting her work in 2026; Kadir İnanır, her most frequent co-star, died in 2026.