Madiha Kamel

Madiha Kamel — Biography

Madiha Kamel was one of the remembered actresses of Egyptian cinema, with a career of nearly three decades from the mid-1960s into the 1990s. She stood out for her glamour and dance scenes, and moved from supporting parts into leading roles. Alongside film and television she also worked in the theatre; she died in Cairo in early 1997.

When her family moved to Cairo in 1963 she entered a modelling contest as a teenager, was selected and did fashion shows. The director Ahmed Diaa Eddine noticed her and steered her toward acting; her first film, Fatat Shaza, was released in 1964. While finishing her studies at Ain Shams University she worked in radio and theatre sketches, and in films such as 30 Days in Prison she appeared opposite the veteran actor and producer Farid Shawqi. In the 1970s she acted with Salah Zulfikar in In Summer We Must Love (1974); her first leading part came in Climbing to the Bottom (1978), where she played a spy who betrays her country opposite Mahmoud Yassin. Thrillers such as Open Eyes (1981) followed, and she worked in both Egyptian and Lebanese productions.

On television she shared the lead with Salah Zulfikar in A Woman's Revenge (1983) and played the first Lebanese woman to earn a doctorate in nuclear physics in Al-Bashayer. Gang of Women (1968) and Ana (1985) also appear in her filmography. In the early 1990s, around the shooting of The Gates of Satan, she stepped away from the screen.