Life of the rich and famous allures Maali Zayed

Published November 15th, 2003 - 03:00 GMT

Directly after the end of the holly month Ramadan, Egyptian actress Maali Zayed is scheduled to begin shooting her new TV drama (Zeina), a woman who defies all obstacles to become rich. The drama is written by Azza Alsharbini and directed by Mohsen Fikri. The new drama revolves around a simple government employee, who is not satisfied with her financial status, so she starts to look for faster and easier ways of becoming rich.

According to the UAE based daily, Al Bayan, throughout the course of events in the drama, Maali starts working with a wealthy family and she experiences many problems during her journey to achieve her ambition, but eventually her goals are reached.

A large crowd of Egyptian actors and actresses gathered at the first art exhibition "Al Wajh Al Akhar" (The Other Face) by Maali Zayed, which featured 22 oil paintings. Maali stressed that through her paintings, she was able to express her inner feelings and the way she looks at everything around her.

The main highlight of the exhibition was an oil painting Maali drew of her mother, the late actress Amal Zayed. The crowd of actors and actresses included comedian Adel Imam, Samir Ghanem and his wife Dalal Abdul Aziz, Shuwikar, Ahmad Ratib, and many more, who expressed their admiration for Maali's talent.

Zayed has been dedicating her time entirely to finish drawing her collection of paintings. “This work is one-man’s show while acting is a collective work. It is an idea, which one is responsible for in an attempt to interpret it in the form of symbols or message to be conveyed to the recipient. My first exhibition includes many paintings about hope, Palestine, motherhood, childhood, woman and others,” said Zayed

Maali’s last film “Anbar Wal Alwan” (Anbar and Colors) was a complete failure not achieving any viewer satisfaction leading her to a state of despair. After the film she decided she would halt all cinematic work and stick to the small screen.

Zayed has been away from cinema performance for a quite long time. She said, “cinema now faces a crisis of views and topics in addition to the damage which privatization has caused to it. Until the cinema problems are solved I shall continue working for the TV through which I play good roles bearing in mind that 75 percent of the audience watch TV. In the course of my artistic career and those of Laila Olwi, Elham Shahin and many more, the TV has introduced us to the cinema.”

The actress known for playing roles of villager women, said, “I like this role because it represents the middle class, which is very large. With my appearance typical of three quarters of women in Egypt who belong to this class, my performance of such role is enhanced. I want to interpret as much as possible the feelings of women from all sectors and aspire to do that throughout my life. My real enjoyment is to play roles for characters different from my personality.” - Albawaba.com