Tayfun Bademsoy

Tayfun Bademsoy — Biography

Tayfun Bademsoy (born 14 October 1958 in Mersin) is a Turkish-born German actor and voice actor. The son of a Turkish migrant worker who came to Berlin in 1969, he finished school there and studied at the Technical University of Berlin for ten semesters. His breakthrough came in 1983 when he played a Turkish youth in Peter Stein's stage adaptation of Klassen Feind, which led to engagements at major theatres such as the Frankfurter Schauspielhaus and Berlin's Renaissance Theater.

Bademsoy has appeared in more than 250 film and television productions, becoming a familiar face in German crime series such as Tatort and Polizeiruf 110. In his first Hollywood role he portrayed Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun in Beyond the Sea. He is also known as the German voice of Sayid in the American series Lost. In 1995 he founded Germany's only agency representing foreign actors and ran it for ten years, and he has also directed short, advertising and image films.