Ayla Algan

Ayla Algan — Biography

Ayla Algan was born on 29 October 1937 in Istanbul, the only child of painter Nevzat Kasman and Crete-born merchant Vedat Kasman. She took piano, ballet and singing lessons as a child and studied piano for eleven years, completing her secondary education at Notre Dame de Sion before attending the Lycée de Versailles in France, where she went on to marry Beklan Algan, whom she had met in her school years.

After training as an actress in New York in the circle of the Actors Studio and on Broadway stages, she returned to Turkey and joined the İstanbul Şehir Tiyatroları in 1961 with the play Tarla Kuşu. Playing both Ophelia and the title role in a production of Hamlet earned her the nickname "Erkek Hamlet" ("Male Hamlet"), making her one of the very few women to have taken on the part; in 1965 she won the İlhan İskender Award for her performance in Fizikçiler (The Physicists). She also introduced the poetry of Yunus Emre to international audiences by performing it in German, French and English, and reached wider fame at home with her humorous song "Koca Öküz".

Over a screen career spanning nearly sixty years, she appeared in films such as Son Söz Benim (1970), Çil Horoz (1987), Harem Suare (1999), O da Beni Seviyor (2001) and Hicran Sokağı (2007), as well as television series including Aliye, Binbir Gece, Unutulmaz, O Hayat Benim and Kurtlar Vadisi Pusu (2015-16 season, as "Anadolu Selçuklu"), and occasionally worked as an assistant director. A mentor to younger performers, she also coached Halit Ergenç throughout the run of Muhteşem Yüzyıl. Algan died in Istanbul on 4 January 2024 at the age of 86, and continues to be remembered by admirers in Turkey and abroad on the anniversaries of her death.