Erol Demiröz

Erol Demiröz — Biography

Erol Demiröz was an actor and director who worked for roughly sixty years on both the theatre stage and in film, and he was closely tied to the Ankara Sanat Tiyatrosu. In cinema he is remembered above all for Yılmaz Güney's Sürü and for Mahsun Kırmızıgül's Beyaz Melek and Güneşi Gördüm; after his death Kırmızıgül called him "the greatest master of theatre and cinema". He died on 18 April 2021, aged 80.

He grew up in Diyarbakır, attended the Ziya Gökalp schools and graduated from the Ankara Academy of Economic and Commercial Sciences. He started on stage in 1961 at the Halkevleri headquarters, and from 1968 he was in the acting and directing company of the Ankara Sanat Tiyatrosu, appearing in hundreds of plays and staging dozens. For his stage directing he won the Ulvi Uraz Best Director Award in 1977. He also wrote scripts, among them Harun, the first children's series on Turkish television.

His film career ran for more than four decades. He played the threshing foreman in Bereketli Topraklar Üzerinde, Ramazan in Hakkari'de Bir Mevsim, Recep the "Almancı" in Çark and Judge Hamdi Bey in Saygılar Bizden. Later he was Haydar in Güneşi Gördüm, Ziya in Sadece Sen and Muhtar Davut in Mucize, and he also appeared in Vezir Parmağı and Mucize 2: Aşk. He acted in the television series Babalar ve Oğullar as well.