Neriman Köksal

Neriman Köksal — Biography

Born Hatice Kökçü, Neriman Köksal came into the world on 17 March 1928 in Istanbul to a family of Balkan refugees; her father, Ahmet Kökçü, had played football for Ramispor. She took the stage name "Neriman", Persian for "brave", and was discovered at 22 while walking on İstiklal Avenue by Metin Erksan, then a university student, who brought her to his brother, director Çetin Karamanbey, for the role of the Russian princess Nina in Çete (1950).

She found real fame with her tough, slang-talking, masculine-coded performance in Fosforlu Cevriye (1959), which earned her the nicknames "Fosforlu" and "Afet-i Devran" and made her Turkish cinema's first and longest-running "vamp" actress, an image that went on to become a lasting trend in Yeşilçam. She appeared in more than a hundred films, cut a record in 1965, and received an honorary award at the 18th Istanbul Film Festival in 1999. From the 1980s she moved mainly into mother and character roles, later playing Makbule for years in the series Bizim Mahalle.

In 1999 she legally adopted her niece's daughter, and later that year she died in Istanbul on 23 October after battling breast cancer and respiratory failure.