Umut Karadağ

Umut Karadağ — Biography

Born in Ankara in 1971 to a family with a background in theatre, Umut Karadağ decided to become an actor while still in elementary school and later graduated from the Theatre Department of Ankara University's Faculty of Language, History and Geography. He began his stage career at the Diyarbakır State Theatre in the mid-1990s before joining the Ankara State Theatre company in the early 2000s, where he worked as both actor and director in productions such as Hamlet, IV. Murat and Reis Bey; he also performed with the Ankara Deneme Sahnesi amateur troupe and served among the managers of the Ray Yapım production company, directing numerous music videos. His screen career began in 1993, taking him through productions such as Asmalı Konak, Karayılan and Valley of the Wolves: Palestine, and he shared the lead in Semih Kaplanoğlu's Bağlılık Hasan, submitted as Turkey's entry for the Academy Awards. In recent years he has played Yavlak Arslan in Kuruluş Osman and Arslan Yusuf in Alparslan: Büyük Selçuklu, returning to screens in 2025 as Serdar in the series Eşref Rüya.