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Kenan Pars
Photo: Wikimedia Commons · Serkan Yakın · CC BY-SA 3.0

Kenan Pars

Actor · died at 88

Profile

Age at death88
Birth dateMarch 10, 1920
BirthplaceIstanbul
DiedMarch 10, 2008
Place of deathIstanbul, Turkey
ProfessionActor, Film director, Stage actor
Zodiac signPisces

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Kenan Pars — Biography

Turkish-Armenian actor and director Kenan Pars, born Kirkor Cezveciyan on 10 March 1920 in Istanbul, lived with his family for a time in Zonguldak before they settled in Bakırköy, where Pars spent the rest of his life. During his military service in Balıkesir he was given a pickaxe instead of a rifle because he was not Muslim, and he later recalled working on the Akhisar-Sındırgı road as part of that duty. Across a career running from 1953 into the 2000s, he became one of Yeşilçam cinema's defining tough, villainous character actors in more than a hundred films, and alongside acting he directed six films, including Oğlum, Cinayet Gecesi and Aklın Durur, sometimes also writing or producing them. He was married to a Turkish woman from an Armenian family in Konya and had two daughters, Narin and Linda. He was also an enthusiast of Islamic calligraphy, and beaded artwork spelling the word "Allah" that he had made was displayed at his funeral. Pars died of lung cancer at his daughter's home on 10 March 2008, his own birthday, and was buried at the Armenian Cemetery in Bakırköy following a service at its Armenian church attended by fellow actors including Ediz Hun and Müjdat Gezen.

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Kenan Pars

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Their work through different eyes

Yeşilçam Nostalgic A viewer raised on the classics, looking for warm storytelling and strong acting.

Kenan Pars's place in Yeşilçam is the hard counterweight melodrama needs: in Ekmekçi Kadın, Nazmi is the foreman who sets the wronged mother's story moving by burning the factory and framing her. In my view the price of such a part was being called through the same door again and again in mid-century melodrama; but without Pars's hardness that mother's suffering would not carry the same weight.

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

Kenan Pars also appears in the social-political cinema of the 1960s and 70s: Fahri in Karanlıkta Uyananlar, Hasan Yurt in Mağlup Edilemeyenler, and Adalet in the same vein. One concerns workers and friendship, one press freedom and bribery, one the ties between a politician and the business world. In my view his tough-man image serves in these films to give power a face.

These are not reader reviews: they are short editorial takes on this person's screen work, written from different viewer perspectives with AI assistance. Reader comments are below.

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