Cüneyt Arkın

Actor · died at 84

Profile

Age	died at 84
Birth date	September 8, 1937
Birthplace	Odunpazarı
Died	June 28, 2022
Place of death	İstanbul
Profession	Actor, Film director, Screenwriter, Film producer, Physician
Zodiac sign	Virgo

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Cüneyt Arkın — Biography

Cüneyt Arkın was born Fahrettin Cüreklibatır in 1937 in the village of Karaçay near Eskişehir, to a poor family of Crimean Tatar descent. After finishing high school there he graduated from Istanbul University's medical faculty and briefly practiced as a doctor around Adana after military service. Winning a magazine talent contest in 1963 led director Halit Refiğ to cast him, and within two years he had appeared in some thirty films; a fight scene in Gurbet Kuşları (1964) marked a turning point in his career.

Trained in acrobatics at Istanbul's Medrano Circus, he brought those skills to the Malkoçoğlu and Battal Gazi film series and was repeatedly injured performing his own stunts. In 1972 he refused a best-actor prize handed to him after political pressure overturned Yılmaz Güney's original win. His 1982 film Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, later dubbed the "Turkish Star Wars" abroad, became a cult favorite. He struggled with alcoholism in his younger years and later lectured on the subject. Across a fifty-year career spanning more than three hundred productions, and work as a screenwriter and director, he won the Golden Orange award in 1969 and the Presidential Grand Award for Culture and Arts in 2021, and died of cardiac arrest in Istanbul in 2022.

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