Nadia Lotfi

Also Known As

Nadia Lotfy, Nadia Lutfi, Paula Mohamed Mostafa Shafiq, Paula Mohamed Lotfi Shafiq, Nadia Lofti

Biography

Nadia Lutfi or Nadia Loutfi was an Egyptian actress. During the apex of her career, she was one of the most popular actresses of Egyptian cinema's golden age. She was born in 1937 in Cairo to an Egyptian father and a Polish mother. Her father was an accountant. Acting started as a hobby, when she was 10 years old she participated in a play at her school and did very well. Her first roles in Egyptian cinema were in Soultan (1958) and Cairo Station (1958), both in the same year. The latter brought filmmaker Youssef Chahine to international attention and acclaim when it was a competitor at the Berlin Film Festival. Her career progressed and she appeared in El saman wel karif (1967) (based on the book by Nobel-winning author Najeeb Mahfouz). She closed out the 1960s in Abi foq al-Shagara (1969) opposite Abdel Halim Hafez as a nightclub dancer who loves a much younger man.