A confession from master actor Olgun Şimşek years later!

Şimşek, who currently stars in "Kara Ağaç Destanı" on TRT 1, held an acting workshop at the Atatürk Cultural Center (AKM) as part of the "Humanitarian Film Festival" organized by TRT World Citizen.

Speaking to an AA reporter before the workshop, Şimşek stated that he enjoys singing folk songs in the projects he takes part in, saying, "I am not a soloist. A series or a friend's YouTube program provides the occasion. We sing songs and folk tunes, but my main job is acting. Our new series 'Kara Ağaç Destanı' is also going well."

"ACTUALLY, I BECAME AN ACTOR OUT OF DESPERATION"

During the workshop, Şimşek shared that the acting profession is about communication and that an actor must be able to express themselves correctly.

Mentioning that he entered the conservatory in 1988, Şimşek continued:

"Back then, there were only 2 or 3 conservatories. About 50 acting candidates would get in. There was only TRT anyway. When I entered the conservatory, I didn't have a goal like 'I will act in a series and become famous.' There was also this thing called theater. They said, 'He is a talented kid.' There was nothing else I could be anyway. I actually became an actor a bit out of desperation. Or rather, I found that talent and said, 'This is it.'"

Expressing that he often heard the phrase "nothing will come of him" in the past, Şimşek said, "If I ever want to put on a play, I want to start it that way. My life began with 'nothing will come of him.' I was in the conservatory with 'nothing will come of him.' I became a professional with 'nothing will come of him.' A constant need to prove myself, a form of self-expression, emerged."

"ONE LEARNS SOMETHING AT EVERY STAGE OF ACTING"

The master actor explained that he never said "I wish I had been something else" regarding his career choice, but noted that his circle expected him to be a musician, stating, "I was a guy who sang at weddings. İsmail Düvenci, Ceyda Düvenci's father, told me, 'You absolutely must be an actor.' He trained me for a while so I could get into the conservatory. Acting began with the conservatory."

Şimşek said that after playing bad guy roles for a long time, he took part in a comedy with the role of "Selahattin" in the series "Yalan Dünya", and explained that he continued to play similar roles afterward, but played the bad guy without labeling them as "purely evil" or "good."

Regarding education in acting, the master actor said, "I think it's not given, you take it. If you take it, it happens," adding, "Education in acting never ends. It always continues. I think it's about being human. Well, it doesn't end with being human either. One learns something at every stage. If I didn't have my own children, perhaps I wouldn't have been cheered so much for my role in the series 'The Tailor'. Because I played a very childlike man."

"ACTING IS NOT SOMETHING LIKE 'I HAVE ARRIVED'"

Sharing his observation that while acting is something that can be learned, it is also related to having an aptitude for it, Olgun Şimşek noted the following:

"We all have it in our childhood; it is something discovered in childhood. The times we live most freely are our childhood years. That is where our most self-expressive, most open-to-life, wide-open, fearless, and unprejudiced encounters take place. I am one of those who think this nourishes us later on. In other words, a person's desire to be someone else out of the blue is only possible with talent. Otherwise, you become a laughingstock. Acting is the ability to be in harmony with another thing, another situation, and another emotion. It is about placing yourself in someone else's situation and understanding and telling their story without judgment. This requires talent. Acting is not something like 'I have arrived.' It is a process that continues until you die."

Referring to Yıldız Kenter's words, "be ordinary but not mediocre," the artist commented, "There are actors who are not very talented. You hear things like 'they are there because they are handsome' a lot from actors. Let them be, we cannot say 'this one is better, that one is worse.' They all have their own flavor. What makes them all different is when the emotion requested from them meets the flavor within themselves. It becomes unique, not resembling anyone else. Actually, there are many definitions of acting."