Berlin (AFP)
Turkish-German actor Birol Ünel, leading role in Fatih Akin's films "Soul Kitchen" and "Head-On", died in Berlin at the age of 59, the Berlin theater told AFP on Friday Maxim Gorky.
"Unfortunately, I can confirm the death of Birol Ünel. He died yesterday (Thursday) in Berlin following a serious illness," a spokesperson for the theater told AFP.
Birol Ünel was born in Turkey in 1961, before emigrating to Germany with his parents.
He had attended the Hanover Conservatory, then multiplied the roles in plays and on television, notably in the famous detective series Tatort.
But it was his roles in films by Turkish-German director Fatih Akin that established his fame.
In "Head-On", in 2004, Ünel plays an alcoholic marginal who agrees to marry a young German of Turkish origin who wants at all costs to escape her very religious traditional family.
He received several performance awards in Europe after this role.
Akin and Ünel rework together in 2010 for "Soul Kitchen", an ode to interbreeding which receives the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Ünel plays the irascible cook in a Hamburg restaurant.
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