Pınar Altuğ

Pınar Altuğ — Biography

Pınar Altuğ Atacan came into the world in Istanbul on 2 September 1974; her mother Selma worked in textiles and her father Niyazi as a laborer, and she was orphaned of her father at seventeen and her mother at twenty-four, growing up alongside a brother named Kartal. She finished secondary school at the French lycée Saint-Benoît and began a business degree at Istanbul University's political-science faculty, but left it behind once she won the Miss Turkey title in 1994 and represented the country at the Miss World final.

A model since her school days, Altuğ moved onto television from 1995, first fronting magazine-style shows, then leaving modeling behind once she began hosting her own cooking program in 1999 and put out a cookbook in 2003; from 2004 to 2006 she also presented Türkiye'nin Yıldızları. Her acting, which she took up in 2002, is most associated with playing Meltem in Çocuklar Duymasın; she followed that with Omuz Omuza (2004) and a pair of characters in Davetsiz Misafir (2005), work for which she picked up a 2018 Golden Butterfly for Best Comedy Actress. Having wed shipping broker Umut Elçioğlu in 2000 and parted from him in 2003, she later joined her life to fellow cast member Yağmur Atacan's in 2008; the pair have a daughter born in 2009.