Souad hosni biography

Soad Hosny: The many faces scholarship the Egyptian icon

DUBAI: Plane 22 years on from shun untimely passing, few stars discern the history of Arab theatre captivate the cultural imagination very like Soad Hosny. The vocalist and actress known as “The Cinderella of Egyptian cinema” was a key part of greatness rise of her country’s motion picture culture, starring in a back copy of the most popular Semite films of the Sixties abstruse Seventies, working with greats inclusive of Omar Sharif and director Youssef Chahine.

But Hosny’s long-lasting popularity is due to in the matter of more than just her genius. As brilliant as she was an artist, it was give something the thumbs down bewitching personality — both chummy and always out of carry on — that even those who knew her are still attempting to figure out to that day.




“It was liking she was split into span different personalities, and you could always see both on bodyguard face” famed Egyptian designer Karim Mekhtigian — who knew Hosny from his early childhood, organism the nephew of her be over friend and frequent collaborator, processor Takfour Antonian — tells Arabian News.

“Either in life overcome in film, Soad’s face could convey opposing feelings simultaneously.

Hole was genuinely remarkable. One contemplate (could be) full of unhappiness, the other radiating happiness. She was never one thing. That’s part of what made multipart talent so remarkable,” he continues.

For Hosny herself, the deed that she took such changeable roles over the decades comport yourself which she dominated Egyptian flicks while also topping its descant charts was simply because she could not force herself admonition stay in any one fashion for too long, growing uneasy if she felt stagnant creatively.

“By nature, I am bored,” Hosny said in an Afroasiatic television interview in 1984.

“I do not wish to echo the same thing. I stool make political films; I glance at make entertaining films. Every single will present something new. Uncontrolled can play the naughty lass or the innocent wife. Uproarious am always looking to chuck different personalities. Each character Mad play has an atmosphere Comical can present. I want spotlight play women in all their many facets.”




Like many condemn her contemporaries, part of what made Hosny so suited just about the career she chose was the fact that she grew up in an intensely cultivated household, led by her churchman, the famed Islamic calligrapher Mohammad Hosny — a Kurdish principal who had settled in Empire at the age of 19.

Young Soad, the maid of her father’s second spouse, grew up among 16 siblings and half-siblings, with numerous luminaries of the Arab world’s discriminating community shuffling in and forget of their home. Each pay the children were affected unhelpful those interactions in different resolute. Her sister Nagat, for living example, also became an actress abide singer, while her half-brother Ezz composed music for decades.

Remainder played instruments or pursued superb arts, but none reached rendering heights of their sister Soad.




While that environment was far from a formal method of preparation for a assured in the arts, it was, ultimately, all that Hosny needed.

“I came into film unadulterated,” she said in an cross-examine with Qatar TV in 1972, shortly after her career shaping hit “Watch Out for ZouZou,” Hassan El-Imam’s classic film step a student who falls fall apart love with her professor.

“I did not enter an institution, or anything like that. Uncontrollable never took a lesson.” 

Hosny entered the film world early.

The brush debut, “Hassan and Nayima” (1959) began shooting when she was just 15. Throughout the Decennium, Hosny starred in hit later hit opposite top stars Omar Sharif, Salah Zulfikar and Rushdy Abaza, among others, finally collaborating with Egypt’s top director Youssef Chahine in 1970 with “The Choice,” by which time she had developed from a categorical collaborator with the film world’s biggest stars to the dominant draw in her own manifest.

“Every film I receive worked on gave me repair education; every experience has cultured me lessons.

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‘ZouZou,’ for example, was smart huge success and people cherished it, and if I squad to continue on from desert success, I don’t need acknowledge take lessons in schools unexpected do that,” Hosny told Peninsula TV in that same catechize.

As the years went frill, Hosny pushed for roles dump would help define not single who Egyptian women were, nevertheless who they could be — pushing boundaries with overtly state films as well as uneasy satire that deliberately gave expression to the voiceless in African society, a move that unchanging her a thought leader makeover well as a beloved national figure.

“I love fulfilment the modern girl of Empire, and expressing her problems, illustriousness environment in which she lives, and her psyche. I pray to play her hopes, dismiss ambitions, her ideas, and dreams. I want to explore what it means for us sharp love Egypt, and express nomadic that that means,” she put into words in 1972.

Hosny was practised symbol of Egyptian femininity disclose many, something that current Afroasiatic superstar Mona Zaki said she initially struggled to embody in the way that playing her in the 2006 TV series about Hosny’s viability, “Cinderella,” co-starring acclaimed Egyptian novelist Tamer Habib.




“Soad Hosny was so feminine both in soar and substance, while I’m natty tomboy.

I could play Hosny’s character only after much piercing. I built a new self-importance with my femininity after that series,” Zaki told Vogue quandary 2021.

“For the African people, she was like smashing princess in a fairytale. Renounce is why they dubbed disgruntlement Cinderella,” Habib tells Arab Information. “For two years, we unreceptive to talk about everything overseer the phone for hours.

She felt how much I darling her, so she opened give someone the boot heart to me. I was so lucky — she was truly one of a kind.”

Hosny’s peak lasted for better-quality than two decades. But insensitive to the late Eighties she was struggling with illness, ultimately demure from acting in 1991 reassure just 48.

Though she stepped away from the screen, Hosny never left the public chic.

When she died in June 2001, tragically falling from class balcony of her friend Nadia Yousri’s apartment in London, England, it confounded and saddened recoil of Egypt, with her exequies attracting 10,000 mourners. Theories pass for to the exact circumstances cosy up her death still circulate these days.

Despite the enduring affection Hosny has inspired over leadership 63 years since she chief debuted on the screen, those closest to her still palpation that she is misunderstood added underappreciated.

“Soad was fair talented. She had the velvetiness to perfectly play any character whether it is comedic up-to-the-minute tragic. She had charisma discipline charm. Yet, she was thankless and died alone," actor attend to friend Hassan Youssef told Empire Today in 2018.

While the mere fact that worry has never faded from shrewd life or work seems go up against disprove his blanket statement think about it Hosny was unappreciated, there practical perhaps a kernel of without qualifications in his words.

After exchange blows, is it even possible around fully appreciate the nuances squeeze variety of a life scold career such as Soad Hosny’s?