Khaberni - The Egyptian artist, Khaled El Sawy, was a guest at one of the Cairo International Book Fair seminars, where he talked about many secrets and behind-the-scenes of his personal and artistic life, and made some bold statements about his artistic career.
El Sawy said that he was a failed actor at the beginning of his artistic career, achieving no notable success despite participating in many theatrical works. This led to a psychological crisis due to his repeated failures.
He added that it got to the point of him constantly crying alone in his room, wondering, "Why do I love acting when it does not love me back?" This failure persisted until 2004, when he was forty years old. It was then that he tasted success for the first time through a theatrical performance he presented at the Hanager Theatre at the Cairo Opera House, named "Playing in the Brain".
El Sawy continued, stating he does not know the reason for his failures during that period despite his great ambition and the effort he was putting in to achieve success. He added that what followed was a great success in cinema and television drama, which greatly pleased him.
A Failed Student.. and Expelled from School
El Sawy also explained that he was a very failed student due to his repeated failures in high school, as he would select a few lessons to study and ignore the rest of the curriculum. He pointed out that he cannot forget being expelled from school while in the fourth grade because of a short story he wrote titled "Cabaret".
The Egyptian artist added that he did not know the meaning of that word at the time but was punished by being expelled, which made him try to find out its meaning by sneaking into a nearby cinema and watching movies and asking about the meaning of that word, which he understood later.
Poor Choices
Khaled El Sawy confessed to the failure of several of his artistic works, stating that his poor selection of these works was the reason for their failure, as they were not presented in a good artistic and production manner. He added that among those works were the movie "El Fagoumi" and "Gamal Abdel Nasser", emphasizing that he sees no embarrassment in admitting the failure of those works as it is not a secret.
It is worth mentioning that Khaled El Sawy was born in Alexandria in 1963, obtained a law degree from Cairo University in 1985, and then a bachelor's degree in film directing from the Academy of Arts in 1993.
El Sawy worked as a lawyer for a short period, then as a directing assistant, and then as a television director at Nile International Channel and some other specialized Egyptian TV channels.
He started acting on the university theater and participated in the foundation of the Egyptian Society for Theater Amateurs. He wrote and directed for the theater, and won the Timur Award for Theatrical Creativity for 1991 and 1992 for the plays "Party of the Madmen" and "Operetta El Derafeel".
Among his works as a director are "The Madmen" and "Operetta El Derafeel".
Khaled El Sawy gained significant stardom after participating in several dramatic and cinematic works, including the series "Solomon's Ring" and films like "Cabaret", "El Farah", "The Island", and other important works.
