Yaşar Nuri

Yaşar Nuri — Biography

Comic, psychological and dramatic parts all fell to Yaşar Nuri, born Yaşar Nuriyev, an Azerbaijani stage, film and television actor. Over nearly four decades he worked in the company of the Azerbaijan State Academic Drama Theatre, acted in about fifty films and in more than a hundred television and stage productions, and starred in several television plays that entered the gold fund of Azerbaijani television. He died in Baku on 22 November 2012.

He grew up in the family of the actor Məmmədsadıq Nuriyev and first stepped on stage at eleven, at the Azerbaijan State Theatre of Musical Comedy. In 1968 he entered the film acting faculty of the Azerbaijan State Institute of Arts, graduating in 1972; after a year of army service he joined the Academic National Drama Theatre in 1974 at the invitation of its chief director. In cinema he began with supporting parts in the 1970s, and after Musiqi müəllimi and Beyin Oğurlanması (Damadın Kaçırılması) he became one of the best-remembered faces through Maşalla in Yaramaz. He also appeared in Yol Əhvalatı and Təxribat, and directed on screen and stage, Gazelkhan among them. He took part in humorous radio programmes and, at the Azərbaycanfilm studio, voiced local films and dubbed foreign ones.

He was named Honored Artist of the Azerbaijan SSR in 1981 and People's Artist in 1989, and received the State Prize in 1991 for his role in Yaramaz. The Golden Dervish prize came in 1992 and 1996, and the Shohrat Order in 2011. Films about him marked his 45th and 50th birthdays, and his 60th was celebrated in 2011 at the Academic National Drama Theatre.