Tamer Levent

Tamer Levent — Biography

Tamer Levent was born on 13 October 1950 in the Karşıyaka district of İzmir to a criminal-court judge, Zeki Bey, and a designer, Meral Hanım, and attended İzmir Turkish College for high school. After entering the Theatre Department of the Ankara State Conservatory in 1971 and graduating in 1977, he worked at the State Theatres first as an actor and then as a director; on 25 March 1994 he was elected general director in a vote the institution held only that once, launching the "Sanata Evet" initiative. In 1984 he founded the Sanat Kurumu Deneme Sahnesi experimental stage, chaired the actors' union TOMEB as its founder, and led the TOBAV foundation.

He taught creative acting at NYU, in Berlin and at Warwick, wrote several books and plays, and productions he directed were invited to festivals in Russia, Canada, South Korea, Iran and Northern Cyprus. On screen he won best-actor honors at the Ankara and Malatya film festivals for Emin Alper's Berlin-prizewinning Tepenin Ardı (2012) and appeared in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Palme d'Or winner Kış Uykusu (2014); a 2009 stage performance had already brought him a best-actor award.

He has played Garip in İstanbullu Gelin, historical roles in Diriliş: Ertuğrul and Fatih, and more recently appeared in Camdaki Kız, Sakla Beni and Sahtekarlar; he has two children, Efe and Hazel, with television producer Seynan Levent, whom he married in 1982.