Souad Hosni

Soad Mohammad Kamal Hosny (Egyptian Arabic: سُعاد حسني, pronounced [soˈʕæːd ˈħosni]; 26 January 1943 – 21 June 2001) was an Egyptian actress. She was known as the "Cinderella of the Screen" and one of the most influential actresses in the Middle East and the Arab world. She is generally regarded as one of Egypt's most iconic female performers of the 20th-century, who played leading roles for many of the country's top directors, in a career spanning 83 films between 1959 and 1991, garnering several national and international accolades. Hosny was born in the Boulaq district of Cairo to an artistic family. Her father is Mohamed Hosni, who was one of the best Egyptian calligraphers. She is the sister of the singer Nagat El-Sagheera. She worked in the Egyptian Radio as a young child with Baba Sharo and was introduced for Film industry by Abdel Rahman El Khamisi. Her film debut was Hassan and Naima (1959), and she quickly rose to stardom at the end of the 1950s, performing in more than 83 films between 1959 and 1991 with nine films in the greatest 100 films in the history of Egyptian cinema. A majority of her films were shot in the 1960s and 1970s. Her notable films include; Money and Women (1960), A Date at the Tower (1962), Too Young for Love (1966), Cairo 30 (1966), The Second Wife (1967), Sunset and Sunrise (1970), The Choice (1971), Those People of the Nile (1972), Where is My Mind? (1974), Amira, My Love (1974), Whom Should We Shoot? (1975), Karnak (1975), Shafika and Metwali (1979), The Savage (1979), People on the Top (1981), A Dinner Date (1981), Al Qadisiyya (1981), A Stranger in My House (1982), Love in a Jail Cell (1983) and The Hunger (1986). Her 1972 film Watch Out For Zouzou is widely considered her most famous film, to the point that many people gave her the nickname “Zouzou", her character's name. Her final screen appearance was in the 1991 film The Shepherd and the Women, directed by her ex-husband Ali Badrakhan. Soad Muhammad Kamal Hosny was born in Bulaq district in Cairo, Egypt, to Mohammad Hosni, a renowned calligrapher, and Gawhara Mohamed Hassan Saffour, a housewife. Her parents divorced and her mother married Abdul Monem Hafeez, with whom she had six more children, thus giving Soad and her two sisters no fewer than 14 half-siblings.