Remembering Youssef Shaaban on His 1st Death Anniversary

Today marks the first death anniversary of Youssef Shaaban, best known for playing "Batlimous" in the Cleopatra, 2010, series.

Shaaban was born in Cairo on July 16, 1931, and received his degree from the Higher Institute of Theatrical Arts, where he studied acting.

The late remarkable actor is well-known for his seminal works, such as The Miracle (1962), Cairo (1963), Mother of the Bride (1963), For Men Only (1964), The Three Love Her (1965), My Wife, the Director General (1966), The Second Groom (1967), The Idol of the People (1967), starring Abdel-Halim Hafez and Shadia.

After his graduation, he joined the National Theatre in 1962, where he was first a narrator of several plays, before acting in dozens of dramatic, classical, and romantic plays on stage.

From the National Theatre, Shaaban embarked on an illustrious film career.

His first advanced breakthrough in film came with There is a Man in Our House (1961), a classic film directed by Henry Barakat and starring the best-known actors of the time: Omar Sharif, Rushdy Abaza, Zahret El-Ola, Hussein Riad, Zubaida Tharwat, and Hassan Youssef.

After that, the remarkable actor became one of the Egyptian and Arab world’s top male stars for much of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s in the heydays of Egyptian cinema.

The veteran actor was the recipient of numerous awards and nominations for excellence throughout his successful career, including the Alexandria Mediterranean Film Festival Award and the National Theater Festival Award.

The late actor was married four times, during which he had one son and two daughters. Shaaban first married an actress, Leila Taher, for four years. Then he married Nadia Chirine, daughter of Princess Fawzia Fuad of Egypt, with whom he had a daughter, Sinai.

Despite the fact that he loved Chirine too much, the renowned actor left her and married another actress, Seham Fathi.

In the 1980s, he married a Kuwaiti, Iman Shreaan, with whom he had another daughter, Zainab, and a son, Murad.

Unfortunately, Shaaban, who acted in numerous prominent films, starting and working with renowned Egyptian stars throughout his long-standing career, died of COVID at the age of 89 in 2021.