Demet Akbağ

Demet Akbağ (born 23 December 1959) is a Turkish theatre and film actress.

Demet Akbağ was born in Denizli as the third child of Benan and Oktay İybar. Her maternal family is of Turkmen descent. Her paternal family is of Kurdish descent. Her father's religion is Alevism. His family was in Denizli at the time because of the duty of his grandfather as the head of justice department in the city. Her father was a journalist and photographer. She has two elder siblings, Sedef and Kemal. As her parents separated when she was 13, she and her mother and grandmother moved to Istanbul in 1972.

She later enrolled in the Istanbul Girls High School, and as her parents got separated she started attending the Erenköy Girls High School and finished her education there. After finishing high school in 1982, she entered Istanbul Municipal Conservatory and completed school in four years. Her first marriage, when she was 21, lasted four years. She started her professional career first in theatre in the early 1980s and then in television from 1987 onwards. That same year, she was chosen as the TV Star of The Year by Turkey's Association of Magazine Reporters.