Known for her silky and playful voice, she had roles in more than 100 movies and was part of what is considered a “golden” age of Egyptian film.
Shadia, an Egyptian actress and singer who captivated Arab audiences for decades, died on Tuesday. She was in her late 80s.
Her death was announced on Egypt’s State Information Service website, which did not say where she died. A stroke had left her in a coma at a Cairo military hospital earlier this month.
Shadia, who was known for her silky and playful voice, had roles in more than 100 films and recorded hundreds of singles in a career that began in the late 1940s. She belonged to an era in the Egyptian entertainment industry that critics and entertainers called the “beautiful” or “golden” age, a time that stretched from the 1940s to the ’70s, when some of Egypt’s most highly regarded movies were produced.
Her fan base reached across the Arab world. Her roles ranged from willful country girls and city career women to emotionally disturbed women and hopeless romantics.
Her roles in two films based on novels by the Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz won her lavish praise from Mr. Mahfouz himself.
“Shadia is a top-quality actress who managed to give the prose of my novels body, blood and a distinctive form,” he once said about her roles as a rebellious woman in “Midaq Alley” (1963) and a prostitute in “The Thief and the Dogs” (1962).
Her hit songs, most of them in Egypt’s distinctive vernacular Arabic, have been part of the country’s entertainment scene for decades. One patriotic song, “Oh, Egypt, My Beloved,” is often played on radio and television on national holidays. She also recorded playful, lighthearted songs like “Drive Slowly So We Can Chill” that resonated with many Egyptians.
Shadia was born Fatimah Shaker but was known throughout her career by her single stage name. The earliest facts of her life remain unclear, including the year she was born. (Different sources list different years; the date most often cited is Feb. 8,1931.)
Shadia was married three times but had no children. Two of her marriages were to film stars, Imad Hamdy and Salah Zulfaqar, with whom she acted in some of her most successful movies.
Shadia abruptly walked away from the entertainment business about three decades ago. She embraced a strict version of Islam, donned the Islamic hijab and lived a life of nearly total seclusion.
“I don’t want to wait until the limelight slowly, slowly moves away from me,” she told an interviewer on her retirement. “I don’t want to play the roles of old mothers in movies after people grew accustomed to seeing me as the young woman in a lead role. I just don’t like people to see lines on my face.”
