Aslı Bayram

Aslı Bayram — Biography

Aslı Bayram was born on 1 April 1981 in Darmstadt, Germany, to a family of Turkish descent; in 1994 her father was killed in a neo-Nazi attack in which she herself was also wounded in the arm. In 2005 she was crowned Miss Germany and represented the country that year at the Miss Universe pageant in Bangkok, a platform that steered her toward acting. She trained with Eric Morris in Los Angeles and with Anne Mertin in Vienna, and in 2007 won critical praise for a solo stage production about Anne Frank that she performed in Luxembourg before touring it to Canada and the United States. Around the same period she published the book Grenzgängerin, a public reading of which later set a Guinness World Record. On screen she has taken leading parts in productions including 180°, Shanghai Gypsy and Body Complete, winning two best-actress awards for the latter, and appeared alongside Helen Mirren in Woman in Gold and in an international cast in Septembers of Shiraz. An outspoken campaigner against racism, she has served since 2010 as a goodwill ambassador for a crime-prevention council under the Hessen state justice ministry.