Soad Hosny

Soad Hosny (Arabic):سعاد حسني January 26, 1943 – June 21, 2001) was an Egyptian actress born in Cairo. She was known as the "Cinderella of Egyptian cinema" and one of the most influential actresses in the Middle East. She ascended to stardom at the end of the 1950s, performing in more than 83 films between 1959 and 1991. A majority of her films were shot in the 1960s and 1970s. 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, Cairo, one of three sisters born to Mohammad Hosni and his wife, Jawahara. She also had eight half-siblings. Her parents divorced and her mother remarried, to Abdul Monem Hafedh, with whom she had six more children, thus giving Soad and her two sisters, no fewer than 14 half-siblings. Her father was a calligrapher. Najat Al Saghira, one of Hosny's half-siblings, was an actress and singer.

Hosny's final screen appearance was in 1991 in Al Ra'i We El Nissa.

Soad Hosny was married four times. Around 1968, she was married to cinematographer Salah Kurayyem; the marriage lasted for approximately one year. In 1970, Hosny was married to the Egyptian film director Ali Badrakhan; this marriage lasted for approximately eleven years. She was then married to Zaki Fateen Abdel-Wahab, son of Fateen Abdel Wahab and Leila Mourad in 1981. This marriage lasted only five months.

Image of Stuart Tower

Hosny died after falling from the balcony of her home at Stuart Tower in London on June 21, 2001. Her funeral in Cairo was attended by some 10,000 people. She had no children and was survived by her widower, her last husband, writer Maher Awad, whom she married in 1987.

In 2013, Lebanese filmmaker Rania Stephan used snippets from Hosny's films to re-tell Hosny's story and the history of Egyptian cinema in The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosny. It was featured in Berlin's Art Week.

Films