Tayfun Bademsoy

Tayfun Bademsoy — Biography

Tayfun Bademsoy, a German actor and voice actor who was born in Turkey, is a familiar face from German crime shows, with more than 250 film and television productions behind him. Hollywood first cast him as Ahmet Ertegün, the man who founded Atlantic Records, in Beyond the Sea, and German viewers of the American series Lost hear his voice as Sayid.

He grew up in Berlin as the son of a Turkish migrant worker who arrived in 1969, finished school there in 1979 and studied at the Technical University of Berlin for ten semesters. He entered acting in the television film Zuhause unter Fremden, sharing the leading roles with his mother, Sabahat Bademsoy. His real breakthrough came as a Turkish student in Peter Stein's stage production of Klassen Feind (1983), later filmed as well. He went on to play major stages such as the Frankfurter Schauspielhaus and Berlin's Renaissance Theater, and has continued stage work since 2010.

On screen he is mostly associated with crime series, including episodes of Tatort, Polizeiruf 110 and Ein starkes Team. He has done voice work in films and radio plays and made short films, commercials and image films. In 1995 he founded an agency representing foreign actors in Germany and ran it for ten years. His sister Aysun Bademsoy is a documentary filmmaker.