Turgut Özatay

Turgut Özatay — Biography

The son of Emin Özatay, a Balkan Turk whose family had fled Üsküp before the Balkan Wars, he took up athletics in high school and competed at the 1952 Summer Olympics; in 1953 a director, Refik Kemal Arduman, spotted him at a cinema and offered him an acting role, launching a career that began mostly with juvenile-lead parts. He later became known for playing villains opposite stars like Cüneyt Arkın and Kemal Sunal, remembered above all as Vlad the Impaler in the Kara Murat films, as "Ayı Abbas" in Korkusuz Korkak, and as "Manyak Mahmut" in Zehir Hafiye. Kırık Çanaklar (1960) was selected for the 11th Berlin International Film Festival. Regarded as the third most prolific actor in Turkish cinema after Erol Taş and Hulusi Kentmen, he appeared in roughly 500 productions. In 1968 he married an Italian tourist, Cinzia Morigi, and lived in Italy for a time before divorcing and marrying Metin Özatay. He died of lung cancer in Istanbul on 26 June 2002 at 74, and was buried at Feriköy Cemetery after funeral prayers at Teşvikiye Mosque.