With her debut as lead actress in the international co-production, English-language feature film “We Put The World To Sleep”, Duru received “Best Supporting Performance” award in October 2025, at Nightmares Film Festival, one of the most prestigious North American genre festivals and had a nomination as “Best Actress In A Feature Film” in another prominent one, FilmQuest Festival, in November 2025 and in May 2026, she received ”Best Performance” Jury Award in Unnamed Footage Festival in San Francisco, the festival’s only acting award in all categories. 

Even before studying theatre for a year at the age of 10, which led to her first appearance on stage, playing two diametrically opposed characters in the same play, she knew very clearly that she wanted to be an actress.

Although later she chose to study English-Turkish Interpretation and Translation in college, her passion for acting never stopped haunting her, so she had three years of theatre, acting and art classes at The Studio Players in Istanbul, where she performed multiple times with the ensemble. She also acted in various TV series, commercials, a short film and worked with international film festivals hosting esteemed guests such as the late Golden Globes President Lorenzo Soria. From 2021 onwards, she began wearing other hats as a judge and jury member for festivals such as FilmQuest and the World Monologue Film Festival, and started doing voice-over acting as well.

Duru Yücel’s most recent cinematic venture is We Put the World to Sleep, an independent feature film 9 years in the making she stars in and also produced. Directed by Adrian Țofei, the movie is the second part of their spiritual trilogy.