Atilla Arcan

Atilla Arcan — Biography

On television, the Turkish comedian and actor Atilla Arcan, born Ali Atila Gürses, is remembered for impersonations that ranged from politicians to entertainers. The parody programme Binbir Surat, which ran for a time from 1994, made him known to a wide audience, and after his death in 2015 the press remembered him as a "master of impersonation".

He grew up in the arts: his father was the theatre and film actor, director and screenwriter Muharrem Gürses, also known for the principal's role in Hababam Sınıfı, and his brother was the cartoonist Kemal Gökhan Gürses. He trained partly in England. He entered cinema in the mid-1960s with films such as Battal Gazi and Zaloğlu Rüstem, later worked in theatre and television series, and appeared in the series Seksenler. In the 1990s the Patbom chewing-gum commercial made him a familiar face, and the ad is counted among the best of its time.

On Binbir Surat he brought political figures and events, such as Turgut Özal and Süleyman Demirel, to the screen with humour. He was married to the actress Gül Arcan from 1984 and had a daughter and three sons. He died on 16 November 2015 after heart surgery, and was buried at Küçükyalı Cemetery after a funeral service at the Galip Paşa Mosque in Erenköy.