Zahrat al-Ola
Actress
Zahrat al-Ola is an actress, and a woman pioneer of Egyptian cinema and television. She attended the Institute for Theatrical Arts in 1954, and learned acting under the tutelage of actor Youssef Wahbi. She played diverse roles in 120 movies, including Rod Qalbi, Ismail Yassin fy al-Tayaran, Gam’eyet Qatl al-Zawgat, Ana al-Harib, and Ana La Akzob w Lakini Atagammal. In addition to participating in several plays and radio drama series, Zahrat al-Ola acted in nearly 50 television series throughout her career, including Inni Rahila, ‘Ala Hamish al-Sira, and Zohour w Ashwaq.
Zahrat al-Ola was born in Alexandria to an Egyptian mother, and a Turkish-Egyptian father, who worked as an agricultural inspector. She moved with her family to Cairo, where she attended the Scientific Institute, which was an Egyptian public school. Her passion for acting and art emerged when she was about ten years old. Zahrat al-Ola recalled her great admiration for the artist Laila Murad to the extent that she memorized her movie lines, and wished to become an actress to get to see her face to face.
When Zahrat al-Ola’s father recognized her love for art, and her desire to work in the field of acting, he took her to the theater to introduce her to Youssef Wahbi -a friend he met while studying in Germany. Zahrat al-Ola recounted that Youssef Wahbi objected to the idea of her working at such a young age, but on their way out of the theater, she and her father met the actress Amina Rizq, who advised her to join the institute to study, and gave her a letter of recommendation addressed to the actor Zakie Tulaimat, who was the director of the Acting Institute at the time.
Zahrat al-Ola left school, and took the Institute’s admission exams without her mother’s knowledge. Her mother knew about her enrollment in the institute through the newspapers. Zahrat al-Ola recounted that her mother was so furious that she asked her father for a divorce because of that, but they were finally reconciled. Zahrat al-Ola studied at the institute for four years, before earning her diploma in 1954. Among her prominent professors at the institute were Youssef Wahbi, Ali al-Zarqani, and Abd al-Rahim Khashaba.
Zahrat al-Ola recounted that when she was attending a performance at the Opera House one day, Shukri Raghib, the Opera House Director, asked to meet with her. When she went to his office, she found the artist Aziza Amir there, who offered Zahrat al-Ola a movie role as her daughter in a movie, starring Aziza Amir and Sabah. Zahrat al-Ola played the role and recalled that it was difficult, given that it was her first acting experience, and that she was scared. While studying at the Institute, she played a role in the movie al-Iman in 1952, starring Abd al-Rahim al-Zarqani, and Mahmoud al-Meligy. Zahrat al-Ola recalled that she portrayed a mother in that movie, which necessitated working with makeup on changing her facial features to look older.
At the age of 18, Zahrat al-Ola married her cousin, who worked as a police officer, to fulfill her father’s condition. Her father would not allow her to continue acting unless she got married. Although she continued working after marriage, her marriage ended after 10 years, due to the different lifestyles each one of them had. Zahrat al-Ola returned to live with her parents, until she got married at the age of 28 to the director Hassan al-Saifi, whom she met while working together in the movie Soret Zifaf. Together, they had two daughters -Amal and Manal.
Zahrat al-Ola spoke about the friendships and mutual respect between her and her fellow artists, among whom were Shukri Sarhan, Yahya Shaheen, as well as Rushdy Abaza, whom she considered as a brother. She also recalled volunteering alongside a group of women actresses on the Ambassadors of Mercy trips to the different governorates, in order to deliver subsidies to the underprivileged.
Zahrat al-Ola concluded the interview by highlighting that she did not get the opportunity to act with Laila Murad as she always wished. Yet, after she became a professional actress, Zahrat al-Ola visited the studio while Laila Murad was filming one of her songs, watched her, then left.