Wilma Elles

Wilma Elles (born 18 October 1986) is a German actress, model and fashion designer.

Biography

Elles is the second of a family of five children. Her father and mother are in the engineering distribution business. She graduated from school with Abitur at the French-German bilingual Burgau-Gymnasium in Düren with a 1,8 grade. Since the age of ten, she engaged in school theatre plays, took acting, guitar and dance classes. She studied at the University of Cologne.

One of her first roles Elles played in the majeure German TV production Ship of No Return: The Final Voyage of the Gustloff of Joseph Vilsmaier. Then she got her first lead roles as Kika in the cinema movie Das Weinen davor by Gökhan Sayim, which was screened at German cinema in summer 2010, Maria in Turk Usulu of Mehmet Günes and Lilly in the production The End by Joachim Mais with Christine Kaufmann and Martin Semmelrogge. On stage she performed e.g. in the theatre Theater im Hof in Cologne.

In 2010 she got an offer for one of the lead characters, Caroline, in Turkish TV series Öyle Bir Geçer Zaman ki on Kanal D, which was over after three seasons. As she couldn't speak Turkish at the beginning of the shootings, she just memorized the phonetics of her lines for her role until she learned more Turkish. She speaks English, German (mother language) and French. The series received many awards and broke viewer records with a continuous weekly market share of 50-60% (and up to 73%), and an average of 25–30 million viewers each week in Turkey. It was screened in 70 countries including Bolivia, Colombia, Argentina, the United States, Tunisia, Chile, Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Palestine, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Macedonia, Mali, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, the Emirates and other countries.