Saturday 18/October/2025 – 11:42 PM
Menna Shalaby was a guest on the photo program presented by media personality Lamis Al-Hadidi and broadcast on Al-Nahar channel, through which she revealed her reaction while receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the new edition of the El Gouna Festival.
Menna Shalaby: I married my job, and my mother did everything and she is the woman of everything
Menna Shalaby said: The word creativity was big for me, because a large part of my life and my life is devoted to work. I have been working since I was 16 years old, and if there is any connection in my life, it is my connection to art. I have been married to my work all my life.
She added: Every role I play is like my son. I respect him and give him more time and space than I give myself. From the moment I agreed to the film until its end, he is like my son to me. In addition, the first time I was experimenting, and with the accumulation of experiences, I began to feel that it had become my real profession.
Regarding the influence of her mother, the artist Zizi Mustafa, she said: Living with my mother made me listen to the songs of Umm Kulthum and Abdel Halim Hafez, music, and films all the time when I was young. We had a large film library, and thus cinematic culture and music became a part of our conscience and our lives.
She continued: My mother is a strong and solid woman. She acted, produced, danced, and did many things in her life, and at the same time she was very much a woman at home, taking care of her home, her life, and those around her.
She indicated that she hopes she inherited toughness from her mother and father, in addition to the fact that her father is not well-known in the artistic community.
