She is known as "Sultan" in Turkish cinema. She was introduced to cinema in the 1960s and received her first movie award at the 1964 Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, where she won the most successful actress award for her film Bitter Life. Having starred in 222 films in total, Türkan Şoray is the world's 'most filmed' actress.

Şoray was elected UNICEF Turkey Goodwill Ambassador on March 12, 2010 and said, "I think there is nothing that cannot be done with love. If we combine power with love, we can overcome many problems." Şoray also has a primary school named after her.

Along with film actresses Hülya Koçyiğit, Filiz Akın and Fatma Girik, she is considered one of the four most important actresses who left their mark on a period of Turkish cinema.

Şoray, who is the only film actress among this quartet to have directed a movie, directed the 1972 film Dönüş (Return), 1976 film Bodrum Hakimi (The Judge of Bodrum), 1973 film Azap (Azap) and 2015 film Uzaklarda Arama (Far Away Search) with Kadir İnanır in the lead role, and the 1981 film Yılanı Öldürseler (Yılanı Öldürseler) with Şerif Gören.

Born in Eyüp district of Istanbul, Türkan Şoray was the first child of a civil servant family. Şoray had two other sisters, Nazan and Figen, and her father had passed away.

Şoray graduated from the middle section of Fatih Girls' High School and entered the cinema with the support of her mother Meliha Şoray (1927-1984). In 1962, Şoray had a 20-year relationship with Rüçhan Adlı (1923-1995), the former vice-president of Galatasaray.

The couple, who broke up and reconciled several times during this period, parted ways because Rüçhan Adlı would not divorce his wife. Türkan Şoray did not leave Adlı alone until the last moments of her hospitalization in August 1995. She married theater actor Cihan Ünal in 1983, separated in 1987 and had a daughter named Yağmur from this marriage.

While she was still studying at the Fatih Girls' High School middle school[8], Türkan Şoray went to a movie set with Emel Yıldız, the daughter of her landlords in Karagümrük, who would later be known as "Emel the Panther" in Turkish cinema, and with the encouragement of Türker İnanoğlu, she stepped into Yeşilçam. Instead of Emel Yıldız, she played the lead role with Baki Tamer in the 1960 film Köyde Bir Kız Sevdim (I Loved a Girl in the Village), which marked the beginning of Şoray's career.

Türkan Şoray tells her memory of starting cinema as follows: "Before I entered the cinema, a movie set came to our neighborhood. They were going to shoot one set of the movie in our neighborhood. When I saw the leading actress, I said 'what a beautiful woman'. This woman was Muhterem Nur. While I was looking around in a daze, a man came up to me and asked, 'Do you want to be in movies too?' I got scared and ran home. I later learned that this man was Memduh Ün. I ran away from the movie set at that time, but later movie sets became my life."

The 1964 film Acı Hayat, directed by Metin Erksan and starring Şoray and Ekrem Bora, which brought Şoray her first Golden Orange award, was an important step in her career for the actress who played "Manicurist Nermin".

In 1968, Şoray won the second Golden Orange award of her career for the film Vesikalı Yarim, based on Sait Faik Abasıyanık's story "Menekşeli Vadi" and written by Safa Önal. Speaking at the Istanbul Film Festival, where the restored copy of the film was re-released years later, Türkan Şoray said the following about the film:

"It is a miraculous thing for me to have worked with Lütfi Akad, a director of Turkish cinema who can hardly be replaced. 'Türkan, you will play with your eyes,' he told me. Lütfi Akad taught me to play with my eyes."

Dozens of male movie actresses accompanied Şoray in films where actresses with a spouse in the lead role were successful. In a few classic Şoray films, in the words of critic Agah Özgüç, "In order to deceive the audience and make more money", the poster was printed as if it had not been released but was released to the audience.

On the poster of the 1980 movie "Gunancamamın Sapını Gülle Donatacağım" (I will equip the handle of my pistol with a cannonball) in which Şoray starred with Ediz Hun, there is the movie Güllü Geliyor Güllü starring Ediz Hun and Türkan Şoray, although Türkan Şoray and Kemal Sunal are on the poster.

Kemal Sunal is only an extra. Later, with the popularity of Kemal Sunal, the same movie was re-released under a different name and with a different poster. One of the interesting events is the movie Keşanlı Ali, where Ali, the name of the cinematographer, is written in capital letters under Keşanlı on the movie poster, so it is called "Keşanlı Ali".

One of Şoray's interesting cinematic experiences was the slap she received from Ülkü Erakalın, who had brought her and Filiz Akın together in the film Günahkâr Kadın (Sinahkâr Kadın), during a film shoot when she was only 17 years old.

In the 1990s, she began to concentrate on television series, the most popular and long-lasting of which were İkinci Bahar (Second Spring) with Şener Şen and Tatlı Hayat (Sweet Life) with Haluk Bilginer.