Hoda Sultan

Brief Biography

• Name: Hoda Sultan
• Date of birth: 15 August 1925
• Place of birth: Cairo, Egypt
• Date of death: 5 June 2006
• Profession: Egyptian actress and singer
• Years active: from 1950 to approximately the early 2000s
• Standing: an Egyptian singer and actress whose career spanned fifty-six years and hundreds of films

Early Life and Beginnings

• Her brother was the Egyptian singer, actor, and composer Mohamed Fawzi, who supported her entry into the arts.
• She adopted the stage name Huda Sultan after Egyptian cinema producers felt her birth name, Bahiga Abd El-Aal, sounded too rural.

Career

• Her career spanned fifty-six years, and she made hundreds of films.
• She formed a celebrated screen pairing with Farid Shawqi, appearing with him in more than twenty films during their marriage.
• She collaborated repeatedly with Youssef Chahine, including on «The Choice», «Return of the Prodigal Son» in 1976, and «Adieu Bonaparte».
• She had an extensive television career in major Egyptian serials such as «Arabesque», «Zizinia», «Nights of Helmeya», «Al-Watad», and «Radd Qalbi».

Selected Works

• Set El-Hosn (1950)
• Forbidden Women (1959)
• Woman's Secret (1960)
• Three Women (1968)
• Return of the Prodigal Son (1976)
• Adieu Bonaparte

Artistic Style

• Her career combines the presence of a singer with the performance range of a film and television actress.

Personal Life

• She married five times: to Mohamed Naguib, Fouad Al-Jazayerli, Fouad Al-Atrash, Farid Shawqi, and theatre director Hassan Abdel Salam.
• She had Nabila from her first marriage, and with Farid Shawqi had two daughters, Nahed, a film producer, and Maha; her granddaughter is actress Nahed El Sebai.

Passing

• She died of lung cancer at Dar Al Fouad Hospital, about fifty days after the death of her daughter Maha Farid Shawqi.