Yıldız Kenter

Yıldız Kenter — Biography

Ayşe Yıldız Kenter was born in Istanbul on 11 October 1928; she graduated early from the Ankara State Conservatory, spent eleven years at the Ankara State Theatre, then took advanced acting training in the US on a Rockefeller grant before returning to teach at the conservatory. In 1959 she and her brother Müşfik Kenter, with her second husband Şükran Güngör, founded the Kent Oyuncuları company; over more than forty years she staged upward of a hundred plays, from Shakespeare and Chekhov to Turkish playwrights, and spent 37 years teaching stage acting.

On screen she appeared in Ağaçlar Ayakta Ölür, Fatma Bacı, Hanım, Güle Güle and Beyaz Melek, winning the Golden Orange three times and, in 1997, the International Istanbul Festival's lifetime achievement award, presented to her by Dame Diana Rigg. A State Artist and UNICEF Turkey Goodwill Ambassador, Kenter married Nihat Akçan in 1951 and had a daughter with him, then remained married to Şükran Güngör, who died in 2002, until her own death. After a long fight with lung illness, she died on 17 November 2019, and a cultural center now bears her and her husband's names.