Zerrin Tekindor

Zerrin Tekindor — Biography

Born Özaydın, Zerrin Tekindor was born on 5 August 1964 in Burhaniye, the second child of Feriha and Ahmet Özaydın; she lost her father in a traffic accident at seven. After graduating from the Theatre Department of the Hacettepe University State Conservatory in 1985, she worked as an intern at the Adana State Theatre, then at the Ankara State Theatre from 1987 to 2003, and afterward at the Istanbul State Theatre; between 1990 and 1994 she also studied painting as a special student at Bilkent University's Halil Akdeniz Workshop and has since held numerous solo exhibitions. She won the Afife Theatre Award three times, in 2004, 2010 and 2014, for her roles in Müfettiş, Vahşet Tanrısı, and Kim Korkar Hain Kurttan, the last directed by her son Hira Tekindor.

She achieved wide recognition as Matmazel in Aşk-ı Memnu (2008), and appeared in Kuzey Güney, Kurt Seyit ve Şura and Kara Sevda, as well as in a 2012 staging of Antony and Cleopatra at Shakespeare's Globe in London. In film she played Muhterem Nur in Müslüm (2018) and appeared in George Miller's Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022). She married actor Çetin Tekindor in 1987, and their son Hira was born in 1989; the couple separated once, remarried, and finally divorced in 1999.