Abu Dhabi: Veteran Egyptian actor, theatre director and theatre academic Sanaa Shafaa has died in Cairo at the age of 77.
Born on January 25, 1943 in a small village in Assiut governorate in Upper Egypt, Shafaa moved to Cairo with his mother and father, who was an Al Azhar scholar, at the age of eight.
Shafaa attended Al Gamaliya primary school, where he showed interest in arts for the first time, joining amateur acting groups.
He then went on to study acting at the High Institute of Theatrical Arts, where he later on worked as a professor and became dean of the department.
In parallel with his academic work, Shafaa directed plays, and one of his first famous works was Don Quixote, a novel published in two parts (part 1, 1605, and part 2, 1615) by Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, one of the most widely read classics of Western literature, staged in 1975.
To the wider audience, Shafaa was known for his many roles in television series, radio programmes and appearances in film since the 1980s.
His latest appearances were in television series Al Qamar Akher Al Dunya (2020), Khat Sakhin (2020), Lyalina 80 (2020), Abu Gabal (2019), Bahr (2019), among dozens of others.
