Şehsuvar Aktaş

Şehsuvar Aktaş — Biography

Şehsuvar Aktaş was born in Ankara in 1964, an only child to a civil-servant mother and an air-force NCO father, and grew up in the Yenimahalle district. He discovered theatre in his last year of middle school in a staging of Molière's The Imaginary Invalid, then went on from the Charles de Gaulle French Lycée in Ankara to graduate from the Theatre Department of Ankara University's Faculty of Language, History and Geography, later completing a master's and, in 1997, a doctorate there; he taught at the Anadolu University State Conservatory from 1989 to 1991.

He married actress Ayşe Selen in 1988, and in 2000 the couple founded the theatre company Tiyatrotem, in which he has appeared in more than thirty productions including "Bir Kabare Akşamı", "Muhteşem Serseri" and "III. Riçırd Faciası". Alongside acting he is a prolific literary translator, having brought dozens of books into Turkish, among them Michel Foucault's Society Must Be Defended, Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi and Molière's Tartuffe.

His screen career, which began in the late 1980s, includes the films Hiçbiryerde and Kabadayı as well as television roles in Benim Annem Bir Melek and the Eyyvah Eyvah film series. In recent years he has become known for playing Hasan Duru in the Netflix series Mezarlık, and continues to work across both stage and screen.