Biography
Name: Selahattin Paşalı (also spelled Selahattin Pasali)
Date of Birth: February 2, 1990
Place of Birth: Izmir, Turkey (raised in Bodrum)
Height: 6’1″ (1.85 m)
Marital Status: Married (to Lara Tümer, since April 2022)
Instagram: @selahattinpasali
Early Life
Selahattin Paşalı was born on February 2, 1990, in Izmir, Turkey, though he grew up mostly in the seaside town of Bodrum, where he finished elementary and middle school. Sports came before acting: at 14, he joined the youth basketball program at Darüşşafaka Sports Club and later served as team captain.
After school, Paşalı moved to Budapest, Hungary, to study art management at university. He didn’t turn to acting until his mid-20s, moving to Istanbul at 25 to train at Craft Atölye, a well-regarded acting studio in the city.
Career
Paşalı made his acting debut in 2017, playing Alp Sungur, a young doctor, in the Show TV series Kalp Atışı (Heartbeat). He followed it with roles in two Kanal D dramas, Bir Umut Yeter (2018) and Leke (2019), then joined the cast of Babil (Babylon) in 2020 alongside veteran actors Halit Ergenç and Ozan Güven. His breakout came later that same year, when he was cast as Osman Demirkan in Aşk 101 (Love 101), Netflix’s Turkish teen drama about a group of misfit students trying to help their favorite teacher stay at their Istanbul high school.
Paşalı has also worked in theater, including a digital staging of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. In 2022, he took the lead in a second Netflix series, Pera Palas‘ta Gece Yarısı (Midnight at the Pera Palace), playing Halit in a mystery set at Istanbul’s historic Pera Palace Hotel. That year he also starred opposite Ece Çeşmioğlu in Mukavemet, a psychological drama shot in a single continuous take, and took on his best-known film role to date in Kurak Günler (Burning Days). Directed by Emin Alper, Burning Days follows a young prosecutor confronting corruption in a small Anatolian town; it premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and won Paşalı the Best Actor award at Turkey’s Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival.
From 2023 to 2024, Paşalı led the Star TV series Ömer, a Turkish adaptation of the Israeli drama Shtisel, playing a soft-spoken mosque assistant who falls for an older widow; the show ran for two seasons before wrapping in May 2024. He then joined the NOW series Kıskanmak (Jealousy), which aired from September 2025 to May 2026, playing musician Nüzhet Erden opposite Özgü Namal and Mehmet Günsür.
In February 2026, Netflix released Paşalı’s highest-profile project to date: The Museum of Innocence, a nine-episode adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk. Paşalı stars as Kemal Basmacı, a wealthy young man in 1970s Istanbul whose obsession with a distant relative, Füsun (played by Eylül Lize Kandemir), comes to consume the rest of his life. Paşalı has said the role stayed with him well past filming, joking that he woke up startled for the first several nights after production wrapped. The series renewed public interest in Pamuk’s real-life Museum of Innocence, a small museum in Istanbul’s Çukurcuma district built from objects described in the novel, and pushed the book back onto bestseller lists in Turkey. As of mid-2026, Turkish entertainment reporters say Paşalı has not signed on to a new project, suggesting a brief break after a busy few years on screen.
Personal Life
Paşalı married his longtime girlfriend, Büşra Dilara Tümer—known publicly as Lara Tümer—on April 16, 2022, in a small family wedding in Bodrum. Their daughter, Leyla Pera, was born that July. Tümer trained as an educator and has since built her own following as a lifestyle and parenting content creator.
In spring 2026, Turkish entertainment outlets reported that the couple was headed for a divorce, pointing to changes in Tümer’s social media activity, including the removal of the couple’s wedding photos. Paşalı and Tümer addressed the speculation with a joint statement, confirming they were working through a difficult stretch in their marriage while disputing much of what had been reported about it. In the weeks that followed, Tümer restored the wedding photos and was seen wearing her ring again, which fans and Turkish media took as a sign the two had worked things out. As of mid-2026, the couple hasn’t commented further.
Interesting Facts
- Before pursuing acting, Paşalı was a competitive basketball player, serving as team captain at Darüşşafaka Sports Club’s youth academy.
- He studied art management in Budapest, Hungary, and didn’t begin formal actor training until his mid-20s, at Istanbul’s Craft Atölye.
- Mukavemet (2022) is one of the first Turkish feature films shot entirely in a single, unbroken take.
- Burning Days (2022) was nominated for the Queer Palm at Cannes and later drew controversy in Turkey, where officials asked for the return of government funding the film had received.
- Ömer (2023–2024) is based on the Israeli drama Shtisel.
- The Museum of Innocence (2026) is adapted from a novel by Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s only Nobel Prize winner in Literature.
- Paşalı, an Aquarius, is represented by the Istanbul talent agency Persona Sanat.
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