Çelik Bilge

Çelik Bilge — Biography

Çelik Bilge is an actor who spent a large part of his career outside Turkey, in the theatre circles of Paris and Amsterdam. Moving between stage, film, television, voice work and chanson evenings, he has an unusually wide range for a Turkish performer. In Turkey he is best known to wider audiences for his television roles of the 2000s.

He finished Galatasaray High School in 1967 and went on to study in the theatre department of Tel Aviv University. In the 1970s he trained at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, with Barrault's company and the Théâtre du Soleil in Paris, and with Bread and Puppet in Nantes, and in 1984 he worked at the Berliner Ensemble. In Paris he co-founded the Théâtre de Liberté with Mehmet Ulusoy, and from 1976 to 1989 he was a founding member of the İşçinin Tiyatrosu company in Amsterdam with Vasıf Öngören and Meral Taygun. In 1988 he taught improvisation at the Amsterdam Theatre School, appeared in Dutch series and acted in Tevfik Başer's Sahte Cennete Veda.

After returning to Turkey he appeared in the series Reyting Hamdi, Kurtlar Vadisi, Sırça Köşk, Oğlum İçin and Son Bahar, and in the films Tramvay, Şaşkın, Umut Adası, Bukalemun and Uçan Melekler. From 2002 to 2008 he ran Semaver Kumpanya. He has also made commercials and done voice-overs in French, English, Dutch and Turkish.