Accomplished Egyptian actor Mahmoud Abdul Aziz, best known for the Arab world’s most popular spy thriller Raafat Al Hagan, died on Saturday night at a Cairo hospital, state television reported. He was 70.
Abdul Aziz, one of Egypt’s most versatile actors in the past four decades, was taken to hospital last month — he was suffering from anaemia and an immunity system disorder.
Born in Alexandria in June 1946, Abdul Aziz displayed his talent for acting in shows at the Alexandria University’s agriculture school where he earned a master’s degree.
He made his acting debut as a full-time performer in 1973 when he appeared in the television drama The Whirlpool.
Soon, he shifted his attention to cinema, where he ended up working on 84 films, many of which are regarded Egyptian classics.
Initially, his roles were based on his photogenic looks. His early appearances came in the 1974 family film The Grandson and the war movie Until the End of Life a year later.
But in a matter of years, he broke free from the stereotype of the nice guy and played a string of parts that showcased his versatility.
They include Shame (1982), in which he portrays a doctor who finds out that his late father was a drug dealer. The film featured Abdul Aziz with Egypt’s leading actors of the time, Nour Al Sharif and Hussain Fahmi.
In 1983, Abdul Aziz played a father in The Virgin and the Grey Hair, a film based on a story by prominent Egyptian writer Ihsan Abdul Qodus.
Abdul Aziz’s popularity soared five years later when he starred in The Beasts’ Race, in which he played a downtrodden father who strikes a deal with a childless wealthy man. The same year Abdul Aziz portrayed an abusive police officer in the well-remembered film The Innocent, starring iconic actor Ahmad Zaki.
In 1987, Abdul Aziz’s stardom reached fresh heights when he played the title role of an Egyptian spy in Israel in the three-part TV serial Raafat Al Haggan.
The drama was so immensely popular that Egypt’s streets were almost deserted as people stayed at home to watch it.
Abdul Aziz played a taxi driver in the 1989 film Life on a Wing of a Dove opposite celebrated actress Mervat Amin.
In the early 1990s, he broke new ground in his prolific career when he depicted a strong-willed and imaginative blind man in the Egyptian film Kit Kat, named after a working-class district near Cairo.
The role earned Abdul Aziz several national and foreign prizes. His mesmerising performance in the 1991 film was compared to that of Hollywood actor Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman.
In 1991, Abdul Aziz starred in the comedy The Man of Cardboard, a light-hearted comedy criticising Egypt’s privatisation of state-owned enterprises.
He also starred in a series of fantasies directed by well-known Egyptian filmmaker Raafat Al Mihi. They include Gentlemen, Hotchpotch and Ladies and Gentlemen.
In 2000, Abdul Aziz played an ex-inmate who cannot escape from his jail experience in the acclaimed film The Pleasure Market, based on a screenplay by the veteran Egyptian scriptwriter Wahid Hamed.
Abdul Aziz was awarded the Best Actor Prize for his role in this film at the Cairo International Film Festival.
In recent years, the Egyptian cinema industry saw a decline amid economic hardships and dominance of low-budget productions focusing on violence and belly-dancing.
The situation curtailed Abdul Aziz’s cinema appearances; he performed in only four films after 2001. The last was 2009’s Ibrahim the White, in which he depicted a powerful gangster.
Since the early 2000s, Abdul Aziz, like other heavyweight Egyptian actors, focused on television serials. The works were shown during Ramadan when viewing rates usually peak in the Arab world.
His last appearance was in the soap opera Heads of the Ghoul, which aired in mid-2016.
Abdul Aziz’s death triggered an outpouring of condolences.
Egyptian Minister of Culture Helmi Al Namnam eulogised him in a statement, calling him a “magician”, a reference to a film of the same name in which Abdul Aziz starred in 2001.
“Mahmoud Abdul Aziz is a great Egyptian artist who enriched the artistic life with his gift that made him a magician in his own right,” the official said.
Condolences also poured in from Abdul Aziz’s colleagues.
“The news of his death struck me like a thunderbolt,” said Fahmi.
“He was an actor of his own class,” said Dawoud Abdul Seed, who directed Abdul Aziz in Kit Kat. “There are very few like him in the world,” he added in TV remarks.
“Goodbye you, magician,” comic sensation Mohammad Heneidi said in a tweet.
Abdul Aziz was due to be buried later on Sunday in his hometown.
He is survived by wife, TV host Boussy Chalabi and two children, Mohammad, a producer, and Karim, an actor.
