Feride Hilal Akın

Feride Hilal Akın — Biography

Feride Hilal Akın is a singer and actress who first drew attention by sharing her own versions of popular songs on social media and then moved into acting as Şirin in the Show TV series Yeni Gelin (2017). She has continued her music through videos made with İlyas Yalçıntaş.

She lived in Ankara for many years and finished high school there, and she first performed on stage at seventeen. Her musical interests run to alternative, instrumental, ethnic and electronic music as well as film scores, and among the singer-songwriters and vocalists she loves she names Adele, Rihanna, Amy Winehouse, Şebnem Ferah, Sezen Aksu and Sıla. Her wider following began when she recorded and posted her take on "Bilir Mi?", a song sung by Tan Taşçı; as she covered more Turkish pop songs, her audience grew quickly. Her videos with İlyas Yalçıntaş, "Bilir mi?" and "Ayrılık Zor," came out in 2017, followed by "Gizli Aşk" and "Şehrin Yolu" in 2018.

Her move into acting came about by chance: while in the studio to sing the theme song for Yeni Gelin, she met Ersoy Güler, the show's director and writer, and joined the cast. In the series, led by Jessica May and Tolga Mendi, she played Şirin Bozok, the only daughter of Asiye and Kalender and Hazar's lively, madcap sister. She and Onur Baytan, her on-screen partner, were already close friends before filming began.