Fatima Rushdi (; November 15, 1908 – January 23, 1996) was an Egyptian actress, singer, film director, and producer who was one of the pioneers of Egyptian cinema.
Early life Born in Alexandria, Fatima Rushdi moved to Cairo at 14 to become an actress. Without any formal training, and speaking only Egyptian Arabic, she started her own theatrical troupe in 1926 and travelled throughout North Africa. Theater director Aziz Eid fell in love with her and enabled her to learn to read and write. She became known as the "Sarah Bernhardt of the Orient" for reprising many of Sarah Bernhardt's famous roles, including Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar.
Career In the late 1920s, Rushdi went on acting tours abroad. She acted in Beirut, Jaffa, Haifa, Latakia, Baghdad, and in Tunisia and Algeria. She also sailed to South America and acted in Santos, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires.
Her first film appearance was in Ibrahim Lama's Faji`a Fawq Al-Haram in 1928. In 1933, she directed her first and only film, al-Zawaj, which premiered in Paris. No surviving copies are known, and in her 1970 memoir, she claimed to have burned the completed film. In the film, she starred as a woman pushed into an unhappy marriage by her father who dies tragically at the end.
She acted in several films by Kamal Selim, including the realist film The Will al-`Azima (1939), where she played a young working-class girl falling in love with the neighbour's son. Her last screen appearance was in 1955, in a secondary role in Ahmed Diaa Eddine's Da`uni A`ish / Let Me Live. In the 1960s, Rushdi and Hussien Pasha Ghannam hosted a salon for filmmakers and students at the Higher Institute of Cinema.
Later life After several films in secondary roles, Rushdi retired from acting in the late 1960s. The limelight receded from her with age and the loss of health and wealth.
She was living in her last days in a room in one of the hotels in downtown Cairo, until the Egyptian newspaper Al-Wafd revealed her miserable life, and Farid Shawqi intervened with the Government to provide her with health insurance and provide adequate housing. And that actually happened. She got an apartment, but fate did not give her time to enjoy what the state offered her. She died alone, leaving behind a huge legacy of more than 200 plays and 16 films, and a life she lived long and wide during which she lived with a generation of theater giants and moviegoers. She died on January 23, 1996, corresponding to Ramadan 3, 1416 AH, at the age of 87 years.
Selected filmography 1928: A Tragedy on the Pyramids 1928: Under the Sky of Egypt 1932: Marriage 1936: The Fugitive 1939: The Price of Happiness 1939: The Will 1941: Forebear 1943: The Worker 1944: The Straight Path 1945: Girls of the Countryside 1945: Gypsy City 1946: The Love of the Sheikhs 1946: Storms 1946: The Reckless 1948: The Sad Countryside 1955: Let Me Live 1955: Body
See also Egyptian cinema List of Egyptian films of the 1930s List of Egyptian films of the 1940s
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