Adnan Maral - Turkish for Beginners

Tuesday, 29 August 2023 00:00
Written by Portal Editor

A few years ago, the film for the series "Turkish for Beginners" was shown on television, so it's no wonder that the German-Turkish actor Adnan Maral is on everyone's lips. Born on July 1, 1968 in Çıldır in the province of Ardahan, Adnan Maral grew up in Frankfurt am Main, where he ended up at the age of two.

Adnan Maral discovered his enthusiasm for acting as a teenager, so after school he went to the Frankfurter Schauspielhaus for training. Maral begins studying design at the University of Applied Sciences in Offenbach, where he studies film directing. After his first engagements in the Hessian metropolis and appearances on television, he was drawn to the stage of the Deutsches Theater Berlin and the Schaubühne. Parallel to his work in the theater, he is also in front of the camera for his first feature films. He made his TV debut in the daily soap "Marienhof", followed by roles in TV productions such as "Balko", "SOKO Köln" and "Polizeiruf 110".

Adnan Maral is increasingly involved in the areas of "migration" and "integration"

Another breakthrough came with his portrayal of Metin in the evening series "Turkish for Beginners". Adnan Maral became known to a larger audience because he had won international television awards. His portrayal of the orderly and overly punctual detective inspector Metin Öztürk in "Turkish for Beginners" became a household name. Since then he has been recognized on the street and spoken to again and again. Adnan Maral is not only extremely successful as an actor, but also a welcome guest on talk shows for the oh-so-necessary discussions about topics such as "migration" and "integration". Adnan Maral is increasingly involved in this topic.

Maral is not only active politically - as part of the Ernst Reuter Initiative, Maral accompanies Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier in September 2006 to continue the German-Turkish dialogue in Istanbul - but also for young people in the film industry. It drives him crazy when young actors are left hanging in the air by agencies and the media after their first success in cinema or television and have to deal with their sudden fame on their own. In his eyes, neither assistance nor advice is provided by the media and agencies.

The comedy "Kebab Connection" is a real exception here

Adnan Maral doesn't always play the lovable, conformist guy next door, because he sometimes takes up arms and portrays the perpetrator in crime series. He also plays very different characters in his movies. In "Karamuk" he is the biological father of the chubby Johanna, but doesn't know it, in "The Hamburg Cell" he portrays one of the assassins of 9/11 and his development and training as a terrorist.

In both cases, he plays the person with a migration background and thus initially shares the fate of many German-Turkish actors who are only used for roles that the script clearly says they should be cast. The comedy "Kebab Connection" is a real exception here. Adnan Maral speaks German here with a slight touch of Hessian, but for once plays a Greek.

In "Die Wilden Kerle" he played three different roles in three out of five parts. (Part 1: Fruit seller, Part 2: Trainer from SV 1906, Part 3: Haji Ben Haji). Here Maral already shows during the shooting that he is also a successful children's coach.

Adnan Maral is married to a Swiss-German woman with whom he has two children. The family lives near Munich.