Tarık Akan

Actor (b. 1949, İstanbul - d. 16 September 2016, İstanbul). His father was a state officer so he was raised in Anatolia. He first saw sea when he was sixteen. His father was retired from his duty as a colonel. He worked as a manager in wedding salons for a while, as life guard in Ataköy beach, he worked in rental boat business and sold tickets on black market. He studied in Yıldız Technical University High Mechanical Engineering Evening Education Department. He worked as street trader with papers during the day time and he went to university at the evening. During the same years, he attended to actor contest of Ses magazine with the hope of being in the fifth place so he could get five thousand Turkish liras, but he became the winner of the contest.

He played in his first movie in 1970. He left mechanical engineering. He went to Journalism High School. He learned about movie technique from Ertem Eğilmez. Until 2003, he played in one hundred and ten movies. In 2003, he won the “Best Actor Award” in Antalya Altın Portakal Movie Festival. He has a book titled Anne Kafamda Bit Var (2001).

“As a person who haven’t seen any louse for almost forty years, I read Anne Kafamda Bit Var with enjoy and at the same time with a pain and heart break because of what he expressed. Tarık Akan expressed his life with a simple language, like he is talking to us. This book is a little bit late published, maybe because of this reason it is less sensitive, more rested and subjective as its last. But this book can also be a source for September 12.” (Kemal Gündüzalp).

REFERENCE: Anne Kafamda Bit Var-Tarık Akan (Cumhuriyet Kitap, 11.4.2002), Mustafa Fırat / Anne Kafamda Bit Var (Cumhuriyet Kitap, 6.6.2002), Kemal Gündüzalp / Bir Tanıklık Kitabı: Tarık Akan’ın Bitleri (Virgül, issue: 54, Eylül 2002), İhsan Işık (TEKAA, 2009).