Biography
Name: Damla Sönmez
Date of Birth: May 3, 1987
Place of Birth: Istanbul, Turkey
Height: 5’4″ (163 cm)
Marital Status: Not married
Instagram: @iamdamlasonmez
Early Life
Damla Sönmez was born on May 3, 1987, in Istanbul; her full name is Tilya Damla Sönmez. She is the only child of Figen and Muammer Sönmez, and has said her mother’s side of the family has Abkhazian roots while her father’s side is Circassian, with relatives who settled in Diyarbakır after leaving Syria. She has said theater and film were her biggest passions even as a young child, and she was performing in school plays and appearing in TV commercials before she ever considered acting as a career.
After finishing high school at Istanbul’s Saint Joseph French High School, Sönmez studied theater for a year at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris before returning to Turkey on a scholarship to complete her training at Yeditepe University. She later trained abroad as well, working with Stuart Burney at the Black Nexxus Academy in New York and with Jillian O’Dowd at the London Dramatic School of Arts. She is fluent in Turkish, English, and French.
Career
Sönmez started acting on Turkish television in 2004 and spent the next several years in supporting roles before her breakout in 2009, when she played Özlem in the film Bornova Bornova. The role won her Best Supporting Actress at the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival and led to steady work in both television and film through the following decade, including prominent roles as Ceylan in Bir Aşk Hikayesi (2013) and Gülru in Güllerin Savaşı (2014).
Her most celebrated performance came in 2018, when she played the title role in Sibel, a Turkish-French-Luxembourgish drama about a young woman in a mountain village who communicates through a traditional whistled language after losing her voice. Sibel premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, where Sönmez won the FIPRESCI prize, and went on to earn her more than ten Best Actress awards from festivals in Adana, Eskişehir, London, and Seattle, along with a nomination for the Asia Pacific Screen Award.
Sönmez reached a much wider audience in 2019, when she joined the crime drama Çukur in its third season as Efsun Kent, later Efsun Koçovalı. The character drew significant attention from viewers, and Sönmez recorded several songs for the role herself, in the melancholic Turkish arabesque style. She has continued working steadily since, with credits including the Netflix docudrama Rise of Empires: Ottoman (2020), the series Saygı and Aziz (2021), Maviye Sürgün (2023), and Kötü Kan (2024), as well as a stage role as Ophelia in a digital production of Hamlet. As of the most recent reports, she has been filming the romantic comedy Aşk mı Para mı? (Love or Money?) alongside Sarp Bozkurt.
Personal Life
Sönmez met actor Ushan Çakır on the set of the 2012 film Uzun Hikaye (A Long Story), and the two were together for about nine years. They got engaged in a small family ceremony in 2018, and confirmed in the spring of 2021 that they had separated.
Later that year, Turkish tabloids speculated that she was involved with her Çukur co-star Aras Bulut İynemli; both Sönmez and İynemli’s management denied the claim, saying the two were only colleagues. She has kept her personal life private since, and no other relationship has been publicly confirmed.
Interesting Facts
- Beyond acting, she is known in Turkey for her advocacy work on nature conservation and animal rights.
- She played Nuran in Ayla: The Daughter of War (2017), a drama based on a true story from the Korean War.
- She recorded several classic Turkish arabesque songs in her own voice for her role in Çukur, including “Durdurun Dünyayı” and “Sen Affetsen Ben Affetmem.”
- She studied violin for two years and piano for one year at Istanbul’s Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University conservatory.
- She is a member of both the Asia Pacific Screen Academy and the European Film Academy.
Photo Gallery
