Today, Feb. 9 marks the 25th anniversary of the death of renowned Egyptian actor Adel Adham.
Adham, who passed away 9 February 1996, can’t be viewed as an actor who only succeeded in playing evil characters in Egyptian cinema.
The legendary actor was endowed with a special style of performing these kinds of roles that distinguished him from those who made such roles their specialty to the extent that he became the founder of an acting technique emulated by others.
Adham, who was called “The Prince,” was born in Alexandria on 8 March 1928 to a father who was a government employee and a mother of Turkish origin.
Being fluent in multiple languages helped him in getting along with members of foreign communities, who were widespread in the coastal city, especially after he began to work in business since he was 17.
While strolling on an Alexandrian beach, he was spotted by the renowned director Abdel-Fattah Hassan during the shooting of a film and offered an acting job.
Immediately, Adham accepted the offer and appeared in several movies taking small parts, starting in 1949 and including 'Gawaher' (Mohamed Abdel-Gawad) and The Big House (Ahmed Kamel Morsi).
The Egyptian handsome young man was waiting for the opportunities Hassan had promised him to materialise. Unfortunately, the director died before presenting his new discovery to the cinema.
In the same context, Adham went to the veteran actor and director Anwar Wagdi who was curt, stressing that he wasn’t suitable for acting except in front of a mirror.
The young man, who was an athlete, decided to move into dancing through his lifetime friend Ali Reda, co-founder of the Reda Folkloric Dancing Troupe, at the same time as working in the Cotton Stock Exchange in Alexandria.
Meanwhile, he continued to do both jobs until Egypt nationalised the cotton trade and closed the Cotton Stock Exchange at the end of the 1950s.
At this moment, Adham decided to immigrate to Europe, but another great coincidence changed his life completely.
Incidentally, he met director Ahmed Diaa-Eldin, who was about to shoot A Queer Girl and Am I Mad? (both 1964) and decided to cast Adham in the two films since he believed in his talent.
Moreover, Adham is well-known for some of his seminal works, such as The Technical Director (1965, Fateen Abdel-Wahab), Unfaithful (1965, Kamal El-Sheikh), The Most Dangerous Man in the World (1967, Niazi Mostafa) and The Quail and Autumn (1967, Hossam Eddine Mostafa) based on a novel by Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz.
According to Elcinema.com, his memorable roles were always in the Egyptian low class milieu where he used to portray strong men such as in The Devil Preaches (1981, Ashraf Fahmi), The Slaughterhouse (1982, Ahmed El-Sabawy), The Oven (1984, Ibrahim Afifi) and The Belly Dancer and The Drummer (1984, Ashraf Fahmi).
Further, he was the recipient of numerous awards and nominations for excellence throughout his successful career, including the General Authority for Cinema Award the Egyptian Association for Film Writers and Critics Award.
Ultimately, he received an award from the Alexandria International Film Festival in 1996.
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