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Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Samah Anwar:
A spontaneous act
Profile by Youssef Rakha
The tragic accident, it seemed, spared her life only to end her career, but two years later her confidence is startling, and her professional life remains as lively as ever
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Books Features Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Actresses rarely have the gift of spontaneity. The images they promote are hardly identical with their true selves, and the characters they play -- notwithstanding the degree of affinity they feel towards them -- will seldom betray their own personalities.
Yet Samah Anwar has an unexpected immediacy about her, a willingness -- which has no doubt been abused by the media -- to "be herself", even at the centre of the limelight. The image with which she first attracted attention in the late 1970s and early 1980s -- that of the vivacious tomboy, unaffected gamine, progressive young woman with a tremendous capacity for vitality -- has long since turned into a professional pitfall to be avoided at all costs. In her life she remained sporty and easygoing, but her greatest challenge as an actress was to surpass herself, transcend the limitations of her own character and play as many different roles as she could, rather than accepting a predetermined artistic destiny -- one, more importantly, that wasn't necessarily predetermined by her. "It's no fun playing yourself all the time," she explains. "When I first started acting, maybe. But then it got very boring and I was sick of being myself all the time. When I think back now I realise that the roles I enjoyed most had nothing to do with the real me, my life. Of course, there is part of me in every one of them, but that's not the point. When you feel you're playing, you're doing and saying things you wouldn't do or say in your own life, you've managed to become someone else -- that's when acting is fun."
That's when it was fun for the audience, too. Most, including Anwar herself, will look back with pleasure to such box-office hits as Imra'a Wahida La Takfi (One Woman is Not Enough), in which she played her emblematic role, a slightly butch feminist student who falls in love with a well-established journalist (Ahmed Zaki), only to realise that he is in love with two other women at the same time. Yet arguably her most memorable roles are those that provided her with the opportunity to be someone else. To mention but two examples: in the second part of the widely acclaimed television series Sonbol, she played a guileless Bedouin girl who marries a benevolent peasant-turned-millionaire (comedian Mohamed Sobhi). And earlier on, during her second and third years at university, she played a third-rate belly-dancer hired by a self-righteous bureaucrat (Yehya El-Fakharani) to work in the first ever public-sector nightclub, in the popular stage comedy, Raqisa Qita' 'Aam (Public-Sector Belly-Dancer). In these roles, Anwar's humour and mischievousness were stimulated. Her capacity for playing, in all senses of the word, was given free reign. These, she points out, are the works she treasures.
But even the period during which she devoted herself to the action genre was not entirely without depth: "My father [journalist and script writer Anwar Abdallah] and I established a production company in 1986, and we wanted to make a brand-new film presenting a totally different view of Egyptian women. This film, Halit Talabbus (Red-Handed), was hugely successful, and that's what made me happy about doing it. It was the first action film of my life, and I liked the experience, because I like sport and jumping about and what not, so it's one of the films I really enjoyed. Afterwards I received an avalanche of action film offers -- films which mostly failed, because, yes, they were bad films. Then I received offers for films that had no action in them, but as soon as I walked in the studio they'd insert a fight in the scenario, simply because I was there. And that's when I decided I no longer wanted to do action. Not only was it unnecessary and affected, I also discovered I was no longer an actress, but a stunt person standing in for myself. The actual roles were never very interesting."
So the decision to break out of the tomboy mould was inevitable, but in itself this was not enough. It is clear that she banked on being different from the start. The daughter of actress Soad Hussein, of Al-Rihani Theatre fame (she was born in Alexandria simply because her birth happened to coincide with the summer theatre season), Anwar's holidays were spent watching performances backstage, and, for as long as she can remember, she had never thought of herself as anything but an actress. Yet, with one possible exception, she has no role models to speak of: "Somehow I never had that thought. I don't know if this is good or bad, but this is what happened. I never watched a movie thinking 'I want to be like this or that actress or actor'. Some actors, of course, I was fascinated with, among them no doubt Soad Hosni. She is inimitable, there was never anybody like her. She's the only actress I've never tired of seeing." Nor does she recall any formative influences: "As for learning, I do it through watching, I've never learned from others as such. People keep talking about it and perhaps even manage to do it, but somehow I was never able to do it myself. Of course, when you work with people, they leave a mark on you, you on them. But when it comes to influence, learning, it is really all through watching."
MOTHERING THE FUTURE: Adham is only two and a half, but, by her own admission, he is his mother's most frequent interlocutor. In the relatively brief period since she adopted him, he has also provided Samah Anwar with an incentive to pursue a distinct artistic vision, to "do the kind of work he can be proud of when he grows up", rather than succumbing solely to the temptations of fame and fortune. Anwar adopted him shortly before the tragic accident which partially deprived her of the use of her legs. He was her intimate companion during the year and a half she spent in America, and his presence gave warmth to an otherwise stiflingly alien atmosphere, as well as helping her muster the enthusiasm to earn a diploma in directing from the prestigious Hollywood Film Institute. Amazingly, she managed to do this in between an interminable series of operations. Her admirably upbeat reappearance in the Egyptian media, which provided her audience with a redeeming vision of light in the middle of darkness, is no doubt partly due to him, too. No one could have sounded more positive, more level-headed and sanguine. "I haven't given up hope," she declared to the world, "but even if I never manage to walk again, there will be plenty of things to live for." Not least among these is the little boy who seems to have inherited his mother's penchant for swimming. Instead of conflicting with her career, Anwar explains, her role as a mother has given her the push she needed at this crucial point in her life. Not only is Adham her "best friend", he is also a good reason to keep going. It was for him as much as anybody that she embarked on a career in directing, with one script about to be filmed while she is here. And it is for him, too, that she awaits her second trip to the US this November -- the next episode of her incessant struggle with bone surgery -- with courage and faith. His future inspires and illuminates her own.
Two years after Anwar graduated from university, she went back, to study directing at the theatre department of the American University in Cairo. Academia had in no way hampered her career ("I hardly ever attended my classes, simply because I didn't have time"), but now she might have felt the need to understand more of what she had done spontaneously since her time as a secondary student. "Directing is fascinating because it gives you the chance to choose from among so many different options. There are no rights and wrongs about it, it's just a matter of seeing things from a variety of angles, each as valid as the other, and it's very interesting to think why one rather than the other. The other point, of course, is dealing with the actors, which is not an easy thing..."
That she should have chosen directing, rather than acting, is an interesting fact. Now that a car accident has partially deprived her of the use of her legs, acting, she explains, "is something that has to be postponed", and she considers her stint at the Hollywood Film Institute the foremost achievement of her life. Already one project is underway, but she refuses to talk about it. Excited about becoming a director? "Yes, I am." Nor is she afraid of the unknown, she says, because all she wants to do is "make a good film"; "I don't want to be the best director, or the worst director, or anything..." Anwar's popularity continued to grow when she decided to vary her roles. Poised, despite the recent misfortune, on the threshold of a career in directing, there is no reason to think that her success with the masses will undergo any setbacks this time, even though the presence of an adopted son in her life has prompted her to work more carefully. "Previously my career served me and often I worked just for the money. Now that Adham is here, I feel my career should serve him. There's a different sense of responsibility about what I'm doing. I want him to grow up and feel proud of the work that I've done, of his mother's contribution."
After all the "part of herself" that resides in each new character -- that which will presumably also reside in her anticipated directing debut -- has remained important. If not for the fact that, as a secondary school student in Bab Al-Louq, she herself was too casual and nonchalant for society's liking, she insists, "this whole tomboy business" would never have arisen in the first place. "At home no distinction was made between my brother and me. I wasn't treated differently simply because I was a girl, so this boy and girl business was never really an issue. Actually most of my friends were boys. Also because I did a lot of sport. We were members of the Zamalek Club swimming team, and that required serious training, full working days. Since we were also so busy with homework we had to get home to Ramses as fast as we could after school. My parents had bought my brother a motorbike and it solved the problem for him, so they bought one for me." Until she noticed people staring at her in the streets, though, she never realised there was anything strange about a young woman riding a motorbike. "At home it was perfectly normal, and I felt that people were looking at things in a very impractical way. That was really none of my business, it didn't matter. I just wanted to be myself."
And even after she acquired celebrity status, which was prior to her eventual graduation from the French department of Cairo University's Faculty of Arts, her act was perfectly spontaneous. Initially, at least, it was only natural for her to adopt the same "practical" posture for her roles, just as soon as her career took off. There were no other options. So it was not a conscious decision on her part; at least so she claims. The labelling, the incessant pigeon-holing that beset her from then on, would always come as an unpleasant surprise: "I didn't want to do anything different from the way I was when I started acting. During the early part of my career, that's what I enjoyed doing most. There was nothing butch or unusual about it. For one thing, all my friends were like that. Trousers were simply more comfortable, and high heels -- well, I'm convinced the person who invented high heels was really a misogynist at heart, or at least very selfish, since he cared about what women looked like and not how they felt."
Her frankness about her position as a woman in Egyptian society, far from disorienting or intimidating, is refreshingly different: "I was never much into makeup and coiffure, except in the studio when I acted, especially since sport had always been an essential part of my life, and took up a good deal of my time. I didn't have time to dress up and prance about in high heels. I liked to sit comfortably and talk in my natural tone of voice. And there was never really any need to put on because I was perfectly happy with the way I was. So my reaction when people started labelling me a tomboy was exactly the same as my reaction when I found them staring at me in the streets on my way home from school. It was something I could really do without thinking about. That really is all there is to it, you know."
Maybe, but it's impossible to avoid noticing a touch of iconoclasm about all this. Even in her most feminine roles, there has been an unmistakable questioning of gender divisions. Through her acting she invariably seems to say, 'I am a woman, yes, but that doesn't entail being x, y and z.' Despite her role in One Woman Is Not Enough ("a very rewarding experience"), for example, she has had no political interests whatsoever: "I really hate politics. If you want to send me to sleep, the best way to do it would be to talk politics to me. I don't like it. I feel politics is the source of all tragedies. Borders and wars and treaties, even when they look good, have a totally destructive effect..."
Politics, perhaps. But not car accidents, certainly. The liveliness and optimism with which Anwar is embarking on her new life also hang on her iconoclasm, at least in part. Who else could question gender while remaining, to all intents and purposes, a perfect conformist? Who would disclaim politics in the midst of being disillusioned about the American Dream ("the America which I saw couldn't possibly be anybody's dream," she declaims)? The accident, as well as an irrelevant scandal attached to it, must have turned her recuperation into a media-generated nightmare. But she makes a point of downplaying the darker aspects of the limelight, even now: "Fame makes you happy, it doesn't bother you, and I disagree with people who tell you that there's a price to pay for fame. Acting allows me to have many, many friends everywhere, people I haven't met but who are like family to me, as if you have a huge family made up of people you've never met. As for relationships with other actors and people who work in the cinema, it's like The Godfather, it's a family thing. Maybe because I grew up in this milieu, there's nothing strange or intimidating about it. It feels like home, the whole thing feels like home."
A survivor, Anwar is also a staunch believer. She would call herself religious, yes, "but not in the way you might expect". How can you expect anything, though? A single conversation with this unique actress is sufficient to establish that she is over and above expectations. You ask questions and you don't know what answers you will get. Sometimes, indeed, you don't get any. But the immediacy of her responses, even when she eludes the question, is something to marvel at. "Have you had enough, then?" she asks sweetly, with the same spontaneity and verve. "Will you be fine with this?" I make my way out, nodding, but at the door I am still dissatisfied, beset by one nagging doubt: how could anybody manage to be so spontaneous while saying all the right things? Unanswered though it may remain, this is the question that sums Anwar up, making her not only "her own figure", as she puts it, but also a figure to ponder over, and for a far longer time than the few hours or so following the interview.
(Main photo:Randa Shaath )
