Youssef Shaaban

Marlon and Macbeth

His father wanted him to memorise the Qur'an and to study at Al-Azhar. Youssef dreamt of becoming a soldier or a police officer. Instead, he has been a villain, a hero, a spymaster and a frustrated artist. Down from the Citadel, into the fray

Profile by Soheir Sami

The story begins in Shubra, where Youssef Shaaban, also known as Joe, was born. When he was four, his father insisted that he attend the Islamic Charity Society School, where he memorised the Qur'an in a year. Rather than pursue a religious education, however, he was allowed to enter primary school.

His early religious education stood him in good stead nonetheless: it taught him correct pronunciation and diction, assets which were to prove invaluable in his later acting career. In primary school, the headmaster often chose him to read speeches to the assembled students; the applause which followed his readings echoed inside him, pushing him to seek recognition later on.

This desire for recognition grew stronger. In secondary school, he tried painting, but this endeavour failed to satisfy him as he had hoped it would. Then he saw the poster that was to change his life: "If you want to join the acting troupe, come to the science lab after school".

At this first meeting, young Youssef met Ali Lutfi, later Egypt's prime minister, and Baligh Hamdi, who was to compose melodies for Abdel-Halim and Umm Kalthoum. Both were in secondary school, and Youssef felt very small standing beside them. When he was called to give a reading, the other students couldn't help laughing at his youth and diminutive stature; the acting coach advised him to wait until the following year.

His first role must have been worth the wait: John the Baptist in Salome. He was awarded a medal.

A meeting with Nabil Badi' Khairi, the son of the late playwright Badi' Khairi, marked a new turning point. Together, they formed an acting troupe and presented comedies at the Mohamed Farid Theatre in Shubra. Tickets were for one or two piastres.

When he graduated, however, Shaaban did not think of actually becoming an actor. "I applied to the Military Academy, but was not accepted. That year, they were only taking students who had studied science at school. I tried the Police Academy, where I was sure I would be accepted. There, too, I failed." Still he did not consider making his school hobby a profession. He enrolled in the Faculty of Law at Ain Shams University.

On his second day at university, the second sign appeared: a poster on a wall proclaimed "Students who want to join the acting troupe should come to the cafeteria at noon".

The Faculty of Law's acting troupe included members of another group who were later to become influential, each in his own way: Ibrahim Nafie, today chairman of Al-Ahram Organisation and editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram; Fayez Halawa, actor and playwright; Said Abdel-Ghani, journalist and actor; and actors Hamdi Ahmed and Karam Mutawi'.

In 1957, the troupe presented Hamlet. Shaaban's strong features, jet-black hair and confident gaze caught many an eye, and he was soon persuaded to attend night classes at the Actors' Institute.

In his third year of law school, Shaaban read a newspaper article which claimed that most law students could look forward to a future as bailiffs. "I saw myself dressed in the yellow coat Egyptian bailiffs wore at the time, and felt a profound sense of despair." Shaaban dropped out, but continued to attend classes at the Institute.

Mahmoud Mursi, the renowned director and actor, was one of his professors at the Institute. After Shaaban's graduation in 1962, Mursi chose him for a role in a TV movie called Al-Hubb Al-Kabir (Great Love), where he played opposite Laila Taher. Surely there was a prophecy there. For the next ten years, Shaaban and Taher married, divorced and remarried several times.

Al-Hubb Al-Kabir was a resounding success, and led to a contract with producer Helmi Rafla for a movie titled The Miracle, starring Faten Hamama and Shadia. On the third day of filming, he signed three contracts with Sawt Al-Fann, Abdel-Wahab and Abdel-Halim's production company. Until the end of the '60s, Shaaban was stuck in the role of the good-looking villain who slapped all the best-known actresses of his day: Faten Hamama, Hind Rustum, Shadia or Soad Hosni were all to glare at him in outrage, one hand clasped to a burning cheek.

Television and the movies took him away from the theatre: after 1965, in fact, Shaaban did not work in state theatre for two decades. In 1976, Samiha Ayoub convinced him to join the National Theatre, where he acted in Rab'a Al-Adawiya and other plays. These roles, however, were far and few between: a decade later, he played Mohamed Ali in Ragul fil-Qal'a, a meditation on the corrupting influence of power. Shaaban's portrayal of a leader betraying the trust of the simple people who had brought him to the throne was chilling.

Despite his roles in the theatre, however, Shaaban's most memorable performances have been in front of the camera, for TV or cinema. Still at the beginning of his career, he played Joe -- the villain again -- in the adaptation of Naguib Mahfouz's Midaq Alley. His golden opportunity came in 1969, when Kamal El-Sheikh offered him the part of the enigmatic, weak-yet-strong Sarhan El-Beheiri in the adaptation of Mahfouz's political allegory Miramar. El-Beheiri was a member of the Arab Socialist Union, of modest extraction, willing to do anything for his political career. Zohra, played by Shadia, is the innocent peasant girl he loves so ardently; but she is also the woman whom he seduces and betrays. For the first time, Shaaban was not just a one-dimensional villain. The new complexity of this character brought him to the more ambiguous roles he was to play thereafter, especially for television.

By the early '70s, he was ready for the explosive Hammam Al-Malatili. Salah Abu Seif's film was made for the post-'67 generation: Shaaban played a gay painter from Gamaliya in this highly acclaimed but extremely controversial work depicting life in and around a public bath. This was light years away from the developments taking place off screen: in 1972, Shaaban married Nadia Ismail Sherine, a student at the American University in Cairo. Perhaps ironically, Shaaban was thereby marrying straight into the Mohamed Ali dynasty, as Princess Fawzia, King Farouk's sister and the former wife of the Shah of Iran, was his new mother-in-law.

Shaaban remembers his first visit to the Sherine villa in Smouha. He was turned away at the gate. A year later, as the relationship showed no sign of fizzling out, Nadia's parents told him he could take their daughter, and her suitcases. They wanted nothing more to do with the young couple.

The marriage lasted for a few years. The only time Shaaban saw Princess Fawzia was the day Nadia gave birth to their daughter, Sinai -- "a Pharaonic name". Ultimately, Shaaban and Nadia were unable to withstand the collective resentment of the royal family, and Nadia went to spend the summer in Geneva. The marriage ended soon after.

All through the '70s, Shaaban was becoming a star. Yet the silver screen did not offer the opportunities he sought to develop further the complex characters he had begun to play in Miramar and Hammam Al-Malatili. He turned to television to fulfil these ambitions. In 1980, he played Sayed El-Doghri in the TV adaptation of No'man Ashour's Ailat El-Doghri, another political satire detailing the changing fates of a middle-class family on its way down into poverty. The central theme was the gradual decline of a family attempting to keep the spectre of destitution at bay and, in the process, losing the rectitude and integrity their name implied. Shaaban's character spent most of his time attempting to convince his sister to sell the crumbling family home.

This role prepared him for Osama Anwar Okasha's three-part soap opera Al-Shahd wal-Dumou' (Honey and Tears), in which he played what many consider his most powerful role: Hafiz, the eldest son of an affluent merchant, who robs his brother's widow and children of their inheritance. The serial played on the contrast between Hafiz's Turkish wife and his two daughters, whose fortunes rise throughout the Infitah years, and his brother's widow, who works as a seamstress yet manages to offer her children a higher education. Shaaban did not choose the easy way out and play Hafiz as a straightforward villain: the character was torn between his old values and the greed for money and power which sweeps away family ties and responsibilities.

In 1988, Raafat El-Haggan hit TV screens, and the nation ground to a standstill. Shaaban played Mohsen Momtaz, the Egyptian intelligence agent who masterminds the planting of a secret agent, played by Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz, inside Israel.

These roles established him as the actor directors hired for difficult roles. But Shaaban himself would like to play perhaps the most difficult of them all: although he has drifted away from the stage, he is still dreaming of Macbeth. His success in the movies and on TV has not diminished his enthusiasm for this role, or his hunger for the curtain and the hot lights. The truly difficult roles, he knows, are there.

Perhaps his experience on-stage and in front of the camera has increased his sensitivity to the different problems actors can face. It was his deep-seated belief that actors were getting a raw deal that prompted him, in 1997, to run in the Actors' Syndicate elections. Immediately after his election as chairman by an overwhelming majority of his colleagues, he bought new headquarters for the Syndicate, "to provide Egyptian actors with a respectable place to meet and work. I want our actors to have the benefits they deserve, and to regain their status as respected artists." The Syndicate had been plagued by difficulties and divisions: its members pinned their hopes on the new chairman, who has taken on perhaps the most difficult role of all.

Shaaban would like to create a new generation of actors like Omar El-Sherif: "dozens of Egyptian ambassadors abroad". His goals could seem idealistic, but he is intent on achieving them. "I want them to feel like one family; I want to abolish arrogance and self-glorification." His aim, then, is to do away with the star system -- no less. "I firmly believe in the idea that arts are a measure of civilisation," says Shaaban firmly. So clearly, much is at stake.

"He is the greatest actor in the world. His picture is there so that I can see it every time I leave or come home. It teaches me modesty"

  The huge picture of Marlon Brando, his hero, which hangs at the entrance to his flat, is in keeping with this philosophy. Shaaban is categorical: "He is the greatest actor in the world. His picture is there so that I can see it every time I leave or come home. It teaches me modesty."

Youssef Shaaban, whose meteoric career was something of an accident, after all, has seen the signs. He wants to use his vast experience to help Egyptian actors, to improve the field in which they work. Nothing more, really.