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Biography

Fatma El-Zahraa Hussein Fathi was born on 21 December 1951. is an Egyptian actress. She started her acting career in 1967 and has played a role in over 80 films. She established a production company and produced films, including Supermarket (1990). The award-winning actress also wrote the screenplay for Tomorrow I Will Exact My Revenge(1980). Fathi started her acting career in Egyptian cinema at the age of 15 when she was approached by producer Adly El-Mowalid, while she was at the beach in Alexandria with her friends. She dropped out of school in 1967 to get involved in acting. Her career began in earnest and she starred in the 1968 Egyptian film Afrah, produced in Beirut, Lebanon. The director of the film, Ali Badrakhan had reservations about Fathi, but fellow producer Ramses Naguib saw her as a potential romance icon. Throughout the 1970s, she acted in roughly 15 films a year, predominantly romantic dramas. In the Egyptian film industry, she was only second to actress Faten Hamama in the number of romance films acted in, though not as popular since she was mostly given secondary roles to male characters. During the 1980s, Fathi largely departed from this role and began acting in more complicated roles in movies dealing with a social and political dimensions.

She received an award for best actress for her starring role in El Garage (1995), where she played a deserted and impoverished single mother who lives inside a garage with her five children, all of whom she gradually gives up to other families as her health deteriorates. The film was based on a true story and Fathi described it as the "most difficult and painful" role she has had to play. According to writer Nagla El-Baz, the movie was a success in raising awareness about the issue of overpopulation.