The Turkish George Clooney, Caner Cindoruk: Interview With The Street Vendor Who Became An Actor

Marina Zucchi

08/15/2021 4:31 AM

• Clarín.com

• Shows

• TV

Updated 08/15/2021 4:31 AM

He grew up in Adana, a Turkish city almost 1,000 kilometers from Istanbul, famous for its mosques, bridges, bazaars, domes, dams, mountains and ruins.

Turkey's most delicious kekab (meat-based food originating in the Middle East) is considered by many to be prepared there, and the vast majority of houses tend to have rooftops that serve as rooms "with the sky" on hot nights.

In that atmosphere, in front of the television, as a child Caner Cindoruk discovered a country called Argentina.

He says that the World Cup in Mexico '86 was being held and a man like clay made him feel close to a nation that did not seem more than 7 thousand miles away, but just around the corner.

Thirty-five years later, thousands of Argentines discover Turkey by looking at him from a screen.

"I grew up with Diego Maradona. Congratulations for being the Copa América champions. I love and follow the Argentine league and Messi,"

the

Fuerza de Mujer

actor virtually gives away

, the telenovela that for nine months attracted more than a million viewers on Telefe .

Caner was one of the record protagonists in suffering, and responsible for blurring the borders:

"I was never there, but I saw many Mercedes Morán films

and I know the Argentine Mía Maestro. I also like the performance of the Cordovan from the Narcos series, Alberto Ammann ".

Former student of Business Administration, today gallant and model.

As if closing Jorge Martínez's path with

The Strange Lady

in the '90s (a success exported to Turkey with the subtitled gallant), Cindoruk left his mark here amid that excess of Turkish cans on an Argentine TV lacking in national fiction. Far from the discussion about whether Turkish products generate hypnosis (or a tireless imposition of the channels ends up shaping the viewers' taste without any remedy), the boy seems to follow Halit Ergenç, the protagonist with the turquoise eyes who had his great Argentine entourage with

Thousand and One Nights

.

He sparked a small social media fever under the nickname "Asian / European George Clooney."

Former student of Business Administration, 41 years old, one million followers on Instagram, son of a writer, he

acted for the first time in a series at age 10, but he has twenty years of formal career and thirty as a worker: "My father could not win writing money and he was a street vendor. I started working with him from a very young age, I know the street well and that contributed a lot to my performance,

"he encourages himself.

"When I was a child I had a fantasy world of my own. That world still lives on in me."

A scene from Caner in "Woman's Strength" (Capture TV)

In the midst of a complicated family economy, but in a home "with two brothers, full of love and hope", it was his uncle Erdal Cindoruk, a prestigious theater actor, who brought him closer to a form of "escape" or, better, of " connection ":" He invited us to learn about art and introduced me to theater. " He was part of his hometown theater company for a decade, in every imaginable field, from scenery to costumes to lighting.

In 2006 he moved to Istanbul with childhood friends and his film debut came, in the film Beynelmilel, the prelude to a domino of series and soap operas.

"I owe a lot to the university. In my first year studying Administration I began to participate in plays and that contributed to my education.

I can say that I only have a business degree, but my heart is in the arts

."

Today he is part of another television phenomenon,

Sadakatsiz

(

Unfaithful

), a story that has not yet reached this country and in which he plays Volkan, "an unpleasant man who cheats on his wife and ruins her life."

Caner Cindoruk and his fictional son, Doruk, in "Woman's Strength"

With more than 50 thousand deaths from coronavirus in his country, Caner continues to record fictions with protocol, but he cannot heed the rule of social distancing: most of his scenes require looks, seduction, hugs. A few weeks ago he was encouraged to "hatch" and spend his first pandemic vacation in Plaj Dokuzbucuk, "the Saint-Tropez of Turkey". "Private theaters have closed in our country and those that don't are trying to survive. This is very disturbing and affects me. I hope this situation improves and we wake up to healthier days."

With a reputation for being "mysterious", for "surly to the press of the heart", he prides himself on that "shield" that allows the media not to focus on his partners.

He also inflates his chest with his second vocation, "the passion for story writing": "I try to follow in the footsteps of my father, Zafer Doruk, but I am still at the beginning of that path, writing is more in the background than acting" .

Cindoruk in a scene from "Woman's Strength" (Capture TV)

His first book,

Sessiz Şarkıcı

,

triumphs at Amazon

, driven by his soap opera fame.

There are 72 pages that hover between poetry and essays, the postcards of his childhood carrying items to sell through those fairytale streets full of exaggerated characters.

Sarp - as the fans of the telenovela that just ended - call him after his character -

is part of that curious boom of Turkish melodramas traversed by extreme suffering, with children as the axis of great hardship and an overwhelming chain of problems that do not give up.

.

When the viewer breathes, relieved by the end of a misfortune, there is already another calamity on the threshold, and so on.

Only in this soap opera, Caner suffered an attempt on his life, believed his wife and children dead, was chased by mobsters, and when it seemed that the universe was pious, he ended up in a hospital after an accident.

He was finally murdered in secret by his sister-in-law.

Caner Cindoruk, the actor who admires Mercedes Morán.

Born on April 17, 1980, from a maternal family of Yörük descent (a Turkish ethnic subgroup) and a paternal branch of Kurdish origin, without children for the moment, he says that he feels as his own the children who in fiction called him "baba" (dad). Kübra Süzgün and Ali Semi Sefil, the child duo of

Fuerza de mujer

has nothing to envy the adult cast in interpretive maturity. "We are still like a family. The same with Özge Özpirinçci (the protagonist), with whom we were already friends."

From this 81-episode experience that made him "travel without traveling" to Argentina, Cindoruk retains the memory of a certain adrenaline rush. The fall into the sea from a ferry, for example, was real. It was a scene set with a stunt double, but the producers were not convinced by the stuntman and appealed to Caner's bravery. As his Hollywood double, Clooney said: "The secret is to be a presentable liar."