Yaprak Özdemiroğlu

Yaprak Özdemiroğlu — Biography

Yaprak Özdemiroğlu is an actress who came to the stage from ballet training and quickly made a place for herself in the Yeşilçam cinema of the 1980s. She is remembered above all for the lead roles in Şekerpare and Gülüşan, and the press still calls her "the Şekerpare of Yeşilçam". She is the daughter of the film-score composer Attila Özdemiroğlu.

Born in Ankara, she studied in the Ballet Department of the Istanbul University State Conservatory and began her professional life in the theatre. In 1981 she moved to Istanbul and went into Yeşilçam. In her first years she appeared in films such as Hababam Sınıfı Güle Güle and Şöhretin Sonu, followed by Alişan, Dolap Beygiri (as Ayşe) and Beyaz Ölüm. The busiest stretch of her career was 1983 to 1986: Şekerpare (1983), Feryat the same year, then Dil Yarası (as Hülya), Çaresizim, Çılgın Arzular, Damga, Fırtına Gönüller and Sevmek Yeniden Doğmak in 1984, Gülüşan in 1985, and Yarın Ağlayacağım (as Dicle) and Merdoğlu Ömer Bey in 1986, several films a year.

Towards the end of the 1980s her film work thinned out: Yalnız Kadın (1987) and Arkadaşım Şeytan (1988) belong to this period. From the 1990s she appeared mostly on television in productions such as Zontellektüel Abdullah, Üzgünüm Leyla and Kumsaldaki İzler. In 1993 she married the musician İskender Paydaş; the marriage ended in 2000.