Veteran Egyptian actor Hassan Hosny passed away early Saturday at the age of 89 due to a sudden heart attack, ending a six-decade fruitful career.

"After his admission to Dar El-Fouad Hospital's intensive care, Hosny died at 1:30 in the morning," Ashraf Zaki, head of the Actors Syndicate, told Al-Ahram Gate.

The funeral took place on Saturday at his family's graveyard on Cairo-Fayoum Desert Road in the attendance of many Egyptian actors despite the pandemic lockdown due to Hosny's popularity.

Born in 1931 in Old Cairo, Hosny started acting early in school before he played over 400 roles in film, theatre and TV works with the majority of Egypt’s prestigious writers, directors and actors from different generations.

The very popular actor, especially for his recent comedy roles, has been awarded many times regionally and during the 40th Cairo Film Festival in 2018 he received the Faten Hamama Appreciation Award. Hosny then considered the award as the biggest honour of his life, equivalent to winning an Oscar, he said.
 

With his career starting early in the 1960s during the launch of Egyptian TV, Hosny joined a number of theatre groups back then and his early films included La Waqt lel Hob (No Time for Love, 1963) and Bent El-Hetta (The Girl Next Door, 1964).

In the 1970s, he acted in features including Souq El-Harim (Market of Women, 1970), Amira Hoby Ana (Amira, My Love, 1974), El-Karnak (Karnak, 1975), El-Hob Taht El-Matar (Love Under the Rain, 1975), among others, in addition to his remarkable role in Abna'ey El-Aezaa, Shokran (My Dear Sons, Thank You), a hit TV series starring Abdel-Moneim Madbouly.

Atef El-Tayeb’s 1982 film Sawak Al-Utubis (The Bus Driver) brought Hosny fame when he portrayed the villain; a professional turning point opened up more roles for him, as he worked with some of Egypt’s best directors such as Mohamed Khan in the film Zawget Ragol Mohem (The Wife of an Important Man, 1987), and Faris El-Madina (Knight of the City,1993).

Hosny also worked with Radwan El-Kashef in Leh Ya Banafseg (Why so, Burgundy? 1993), Osama Fawzy in Afarit El-Asphalt (Demons of the Asphalt, 1996) and Dawoud Abdel-Sayed in Sareq El-Farah (Joy's Thief, 1994) – a film for which Hosny won five awards for his character Rokba.

Throughout the 1990s Hosny was ever present on screen in a new phase of his career, appearing in supporting roles in dozens of commercially popular films and theatre plays, boosting the careers of a younger generation of actors; such as Alaa Wali El-Din, Ahmed El-Sakka, Karim Abdel-Aziz, Mohamed Heneidi and many others.

Many of Hosny's joking lines still make some of the funniest memes on social media.
 

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture