‘My dad said, you must have mixed him up with another baby’

Acting was never part of Can Yaman’s plan. The Turkish heartthrob studied law and was working on his career path when friends encouraged him to try his luck in front of the camera. The rest is history. After enrolling in acting classes, Yaman’s looks and screen presence quickly caught the industry’s attention, and in 2014, he landed his first role. Yaman became a star in Turkey, making his international breakthrough four years later. Since, he’s moved from one global project to the next, with his latest, an ambitious international period drama titled “El Turco,” bringing him to Spain. 

Yaman is fully aware of the reaction his appearance provokes, having thousands of fans from all over the world. But, as he recently revealed, it wasn’t always that way. During an appearance on the Spanish talk show “El Hormiguero,” host Pablo Motos jokingly told him he had read that Yaman was “very ugly” as a baby. The actor laughed. “Right after I was born. I was covered in hair—so much hair that they practically took me straight to the hairdresser,” he said.

Yaman shared his father’s reaction when he first saw him. “My father said to the doctors, ‘You must have mixed him up with another baby, because he doesn’t look like my son,’” he recalled. “After a month, everything was fine.” Playful about his current image, he added, “They’ve tried many times to make me look uglier. They didn’t succeed.”

© Ivan Romano

During his time in Spain, Yaman has impressed audiences with his fluent Spanish, a language he began studying while filming the TV show “Sandokan” in Italy. “I decided I wanted to come to Spain, to live and work here,” he said. “I told my agent that after filming, I wanted to move and study Spanish.”

Yaman committed fully, spending a year attending lessons five days a week for four hours a day. The effort paid off. He has since filmed “El laberinto de las mariposas” entirely in Spanish. 

Yaman’s brief detention in Istanbul

© Ay Yapim

Yaman also addressed recent headlines about his brief detention during a police raid at a nightclub in Istanbul, making it clear that he had nothing to hide. In comments made to the Spanish news outlet Vertele, he explained that such checks are routine in Turkey and have affected many public figures. 

“They do it to everyone. Before I arrived, many famous people had already been detained,” he said. “They stopped me and released me immediately. We had nothing on us. The next day I flew to Italy, and everything continued as it should.”

© Mondadori Portfolio