Renan Demirkan

Renan Demirkan — Biography

Renan Demirkan, a Turkish-German actress and author of Circassian descent, was born on 12 June 1955 in Ankara; her family took her to Hannover at seven, in 1962. After finishing school she trained for the stage at a drama college, turning professional in 1979 with the boulevard comedy Sextett.

She spent much of that decade on stages across Germany, in classic and contemporary roles including King Lear and Ghetto to Uncle Vanya, Romeo and Juliet, Kellermanns Prozess and Trommeln in der Nacht, all at subsidised German theatres. Screen work followed from 1982, and her appearance opposite Götz George the next year in Zahn um Zahn brought her far wider recognition; she then played Inga in Super and Azade Çelik in Reporter, later taking recurring guest roles in German crime series.

Alongside acting she built a parallel career as a writer of novels, short stories and an autobiography. The Goldene Kamera came in 1989, the Adolf Grimme Award in 1990 and the INTHEGA theatre prize in 2002; President Roman Herzog had given her the Federal Cross of Merit back in 1998. The civic appeal "checkpoint:demokratie", which she launched in 2016, was followed a year later by a non-profit company of her own founding, "Zeit der Maulbeeren"; backed by the North Rhine-Westphalia state government, it gives women facing cancer and financial hardship a free three-week support programme.