Youssef Wahbi

Who was Youssef Wahbi?

Youssef Wahbi was an Egyptian stage and film actor and director, a leading star of the 1930s and 1940s and one of the most prominent Arab stage actors of any era, who also served on the jury of the Cannes Film Festival in 1946. He was born to a high state official in Egypt but renounced his family's wealth and traveled to Rome in the 1920s to study theatre. Besides his stage work, he acted in about 50 films, starting with Awlad al-Zawat to "Iskanderiya... lih?". He died, sick with arthritis and with a fractured pelvis, survived by his wife.