Saadet Işıl Aksoy is a Turkish-born actress, who received critical acclaim with her portrayal of Aska, a red-haired punk trumpet player in Italian actor-director Sergio Castellitto's film Twice Born, in which she co-starred with Penélope Cruz and Emile Hirsch. Christy Lemire described her as "the striking Saadet Aksoy" in her Twice Born review, and film critic David Rooney stated, "Saadet Aksoy brings a subdued fieriness to her scenes as a Bosnian woman" in The Hollywood Reporter. In his article on Variety, Boyd Van Hoeij wrote, "Turkish thesp Saadet Aksoy impresses in a supporting role as a spunky Yugoslav local." about her performance in Twice Born. Sergio Castellitto explained his first encounter with Aksoy in an article on Vogue Turkey with these words: "Saadet, the first time I met you it was through the internet. I had accidentally 'fallen' on a movie trailer. I actually don’t remember anything of that trailer, of that movie. Yet I remember that I saw a woman turning her head abruptly to the camera, her blue eyes burning everything in that framing, blasting the reverse shot." Her recent performance as Remziye in the 2018 movie Saf was described on Filmuforia as "SAF is carried forward by the sheer brilliance of Saadet Isil Aksoy whose Remziye acts in an enlightened and humanitarian way when the chips are down." In his article about Saf on The Film Stage, Jared Mobarak wrote: "Aksoy carries the rest of the film through an authentic progression from indignation to shame and ultimately to clarity. Saadet Aksoy has been in the juries of such film festivals as Cairo International Film Festival, Sarajevo Film Festival and Istanbul Film Festival. She became the spokesperson for L'Oreal Paris in Turkey in the year 2013.
Early life
Aksoy was born in Istanbul to İnci Aksoy, a retired chief police inspector, and Anıl Aksoy, a retired police chief. She talks about the strong female figures in her family in an interview saying: "My mom and grandma have been my two role models. Both have stood out in life not only with their physical beauty but they have also been successful in their careers and been respected in life thanks to their identities and personalities." Her grandmother Münire Şahinbaş was one of the first female business magnates in Turkey. Aksoy has two older brothers. In an interview she described her childhood and what cinema meant for her even at a young age: "There were always certain rules in the family. Even though my brothers and I were having so much fun together, I was also quite introverted. Movies were what took me away to completely different lands, and cinema has always amazed me since my childhood." She takes her first name Saadet from her grandmother on her father's side who died before she was born, and like most Turkish names, it has a specific meaning. The word saadet means bliss in English.
