File: Nadia Lotfy.
CAIRO - 3 January 2022: Late great actress Nadia Lotfy was a distinguished actress that managed to gain both the love and respect of her fans for more than 50 years.
On the occasion of her birthday Egypt Today will shed the light on the most important stages of her life.
Lotfy was born in Cairo as Paula Shafik on January 3, 1937 to an Egyptian father and a Polish mother.
In her prime, she was one of the most prominent stars in the Egyptian cinema's Golden Age.
Lotfy began acting as a hobby.
When she was 10 years old, she participated in a play at her school and provided an outstanding performance.
At the age of 24, Lotfy made her screen debut in 1958, at the same time late Egyptian international star Omar Sharif was the reigning king of the Egyptian cinema, and his wife, Egyptian superstar Faten Hamama, its queen.
Faten Hamama had just had a smash hit with the film "La Anam" (Insomnia) with Hamama as "Nadia Lotfy", a wilful young girl who destroys her father's marriage, so Paula decided to appropriate the name.
The young Nadia was discovered by director Ramsis Naguib and she took her first role in the black & white drama "Sultan" in 1958.
Her second appearance came through a smaller role in one of the film landmarks of its time, “Cairo Station”.
In 1963, she played a Frankish woman warrior of the Crusade era, donning full armor to go into battle against her Christian-Arab lover, in “Al-Naser Salah el-Dine” movie.
In “Lil-Rigal Faqat” (Only for Men) (1964), starring Lotfy and Souad Hosny, both played the roles of two female geologists who violated their company's rules by disguising themselves as men and going to work in the dessert, where they find they have to suppress their romantic natures to sustain the disguise.
In the mid-1960s, she starred in two films that were based on stories by Nobel-winning author Naguib Mahfouz, just a few years following the publication of his widely banned novel, “Children of Gebelawi”.
Lotfy finished the decade starring in 1969's “Abi foq al-Shagara” (My dad above the tree), as a night club dancer who beds a much younger man, then discovers that she once knew his father equally well.
She starred in another film with Souad Hosni which is “Al-Saba' Banat” (The Seven Girls).
In the 1970s, her career almost came to its end as Egypt's "Golden Age" came to a close.
Having made close to 50 films in the first 11 years of her career, she only made three in the decade that followed, and quitted working in the film industry in 1981.
Despite being one of the most beautiful actresses in the history of Egyptian cinema, Lotfy didn’t rely mainly on her beauty, and performed a number of roles that depended mainly on her strong acting capabilities.
In 2014, the Cairo International Film Festival paid tribute to Nadia Lotfy by using her photo on the Festival's official poster.
In 2019, the minister of culture granted the veteran actress the State Award for Arts, in the presence of numerous actors and actresses such as Ragaa el-Gedawi, Samiha Ayoub, Dalal Abdel Aziz, Hend Sabry, Anoushka, Emy Samir Ghanem, Farouk Falawkas, Samir Sabri among others.
On February 4, 2020 Egypt lost the last princess of the Egyptian cinema's Golden Age at 83 after a long struggle with illness.
The Egyptian Actors Syndicate announced the death of the great Egyptian star on its official Facebook page.
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