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Canan Kir was born in Lünen on July 20, 1987 to Turkish immigrants and grew up in Heidelberg from the age of five. From 2008 to 2012, she completed her acting training at the Theaterakademie Mannheim. During these years, she appeared on stage in productions at Theaterhaus G7 and Theater Heidelberg, among others.
After graduating, she appeared in 2013 at Hoftheater Tromm in "Sen ve Ben BIZ Du und Ich," a German-Turkish language play for children (directed by Jürgen Flügge). In 2014, Kir became a member of the theater education project 'Mensch: Theater!'. In the same year, she appeared in her first feature film: in the multi-award-winning social comedy "Ein Geschenk der Götter" (2014), she played a volatile long-term unemployed woman who is told by the employment office to participate in a theater project. At the German Actor's Award, the film won an award for Best Ensemble.
On the stage, Kir received an award with the ensemble of 'Mensch: Theater!' for "Mein Leben. Meine Liebe. Meine Ehre?" (2015), a play about prevention of violence in the name of honor, the "Aktiv für Demokratie und Toleranz" award, which is presented by the Alliance for Democracy and Tolerance, a department of the Federal Agency for Civic Education.
On the big screen, she played a supporting role as a neighbour in the coming-of-age film "Hördur - Zwischen den Welten" (2015), which won the German Film Critics' Award for Best Children's Film. Kir had other supporting roles in the tragicomedy "Wo willst du hin, Habibi?" ("Where Are You Going, Habibi?", 2015), about the friendship of a gay German Turk and a straight wrestler, and in an episode of the TV crime series "SOKO Leipzig" (2016).
In 2018, filmmaker Anne Zohra Berrached cast Kir in a leading role in the drama "Die Welt wird eine andere sein" ("Copilot"), about a young woman's love for a man who becomes one of the September 11, 2001, terrorists. The film had its world premiere in the Competition of the Berlinale 2021.