Nurseli İdiz

Conservatory first, then a career spent mostly on the road

She was born Nurseli Çamlıbel in Istanbul on 6 October 1960. Her training was the formal route: the theatre department of the Ankara State Conservatory, plus a second degree at Hacettepe University in archaeology and art history. Professional work began in 1981 at Ankara Sanat Tiyatrosu, and from there she moved through the institutions — Ankara State Theatres, Istanbul State Theatres, Istanbul City Theatres — before joining the private Sadri Alışık Tiyatrosu, where some of her best-received stage work was done.

In an interview published on 1 September 2024 she counted 43 years in theatre and cinema and named the people who set her going: Okan Uysaler, who put her in front of a television camera at 20, and her conservatory teachers Can Gürzap and Cihan Ünal. Asked in the same conversation why she keeps going back to the stage when screen work pays better and demands less travel, her answer was the live charge of a theatre and the give-and-take with an audience, which she described as something she cannot do without. That preference has shaped the last decade of her working life more than any screen credit has.

Repertory roles, then a familiar screen face

Her documented stage roles run from 1980 through the state and city repertory years and into commercial production: Yelena Andreyevna in Vanya Dayı in 1990, Fikriye Hanım in Allahaısmarladık Cumhuriyet in 1996, Chekhov and Shaw alongside contemporary Turkish writing, and more recently Aşk-ı Memduh in 2017. It is an unusually long continuous stage record for a Turkish actor of her generation, most of whom drifted permanently into television.

On film she appeared in Gece Yolculuğu in 1987, Kahpe Bizans in 1999 and Şarkıcı in 2000. Television brought the wider recognition: Kınalı Kar in 2002, Harem in 2012, İstanbullu Gelin in 2019, Eşkıya Dünyaya Hükümdar Olmaz in 2021, and four episodes of Persona in 2023 as Melek Asil. The pattern is a stage actor who takes screen work in blocks and then returns to touring, rather than a television regular who occasionally visits a theatre.

What the awards were for

Her prizes are split between the two trades. The Cinema Writers Association named her best actress in 1994, and the Ankara International Film Festival did the same in 1995. A Sadri Alışık award for best supporting actress followed in 2002. The stage recognition that matters most came in 2008, when the Afife Theatre Awards gave her best supporting actress of the year for Kadıncıklar, performed with the Sadri Alışık company. In 2022 Yeni Tiyatro Dergisi gave her a special jury prize in its labour and achievement category — an award for persistence rather than for a single performance, which fits the shape of the career.

Etekler ve Pantolonlar, seven seasons in

The production that has carried her since 2019 is Etekler ve Pantolonlar, written by Mine Artu and directed by Serkan Budak with Irmak Uzun as assistant director. İdiz plays opposite Nergis Kumbasar and the younger Kimya Gökçe Aytaç. The premise is small and the play stays inside it: Nurcan turns up at the home of Aysel, an old schoolfriend she has not seen for years, wanting help to take revenge on an unfaithful husband. The planning session turns into an audit of both marriages, and both women arrive at the same uncomfortable finding — that they have become what other people wanted them to be. It runs 80 minutes with no interval and carries a 12-plus age guidance.

Several Turkish award panels named it the best play of 2021, and it is now in its seventh season, toured by BAM Yapım. The commercial record is the real evidence: on Biletinial it holds 4.7 out of 5 from 3,194 ratings, a volume that few touring Turkish plays accumulate. İdiz has described its subject as the loyalty question inside relationships between women and men, and a woman's search for her own identity — a summary that matches what the text actually does, rather than the broader comedy it is often sold as.

The touring is relentless and mostly outside Istanbul. The company played Ayvalık on 16 May 2025 to a sold-out house as part of a nine-day run that also took in Ankara, Kayseri, Kilis, Mersin, İskenderun and Ceyhan. In 2026 the play reached the İMİ Koleji stage in Milas on 12 April, the Hüseyin Güntaş hall at the Tunceli provincial culture centre on 11 June, and the Kemal Sunal hall of the Malatya Congress and Culture Centre on 12 June. Municipal culture centres and school auditoriums, not fixed city-centre theatres, are where most of this work happens.

Two formats built in the last two years

In the summer of 2024 she started the Boomer Talk Show with Mertcan Ziylan, an Anadolu University theatre graduate several generations her junior, at Motto Sahne in Kadıköy. It runs 60 minutes, carries an 18-plus restriction, uses surprise guests and real stories, pulls the audience into the conversation, and treats the friction between the X, Y and Z generations as material for fairly sharp comedy. She has been clear about why it is a two-hander rather than a solo: she does not consider herself a stand-up and says it is not something she could do alone.

The newer piece is Neşe-i Muhabbet, produced in 2026 by Temaşa Gösteri Sanatları, written and directed by Serkan Budak with Demet Altuner as assistant director and dramaturgy by Mustafa Ergüven. Sevdim Selkuşu, who originated the project, acts and sings in it as music director, with arrangements and conducting by Mert Ali İçelli and a live orchestra on stage. Sketches, songs and spoken sections run together in a single 75-minute act, and it is the first time İdiz has appeared on a theatre stage billed as Nurseli İdiz rather than a character. Tickets have been on sale for dates from 27 October to 8 December 2026 from ₺1,000, including Urla's Hakan Çeken Kültür Merkezi on 21 November 2026 at 20:00 at ₺1,100.

Where she stands in October 2026

The pace has had consequences. On 14 February 2026, after reports circulated that she had been taken to hospital, İdiz answered them herself on social media: she had had a short-lived heart rhythm irregularity brought on by the mounting tempo and fatigue of the tour, her doctor had treated her at home, and there was nothing serious. Her words were that she was fine, at home and resting, and not in hospital. She said she would rest for two days and pick the play up where it had been left. She was 65 at the time.

Screen work has returned in parallel. The Movie Database lists her in 2026 as Saliha across 60 episodes of Düşes, the largest recent television commitment of her career, and in the cast of the Aşık Veysel film the same year. She remains a blunt interviewee about the trade: asked on 25 October 2026 whether she would play the younger self of Hande Erçel, she said she would not, allowed that Erçel is a beautiful woman, and argued that acting has nothing to do with modelling — citing Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ, who went to study in America while others were enjoying themselves, as the counter-example of someone who put the work in. In 2024 she had made the complementary point, that established actors should be helping newcomers rather than blocking them.

As of late October 2026 three of her productions are listed as on stage, with Etekler ve Pantolonlar on sale through to 15 January 2027. The evidence is of an actor in her mid-sixties who has built her own touring circuit and is working it harder than most people half her age.