Nelly Artin Kalfayan, better known by only her mononym Nelly, is an Egyptian actress, singer, comedian, dancer, television personality, and all-around entertainer.
Family background
Nelly is of Armenian descent from a family who migrated from Aleppo, Syria. The school she attended as a child was run by and for people of Armenian descent in Cairo. She is the younger sister of Feyrouz, a well-known child actress, and a cousin of Lubluba, another well-known Egyptian-Armenian film actress who is a little older than she is. Nelly was married to the Egyptian film director Houssam El-Din Mustafa, and later on she married musician Moody Elemam for a very short time. She later married Khaled Barakat and moved to London, then later divorced and married Adel Hossny, another Egyptian businessman working in the Tourism industry.
Career in entertainment
Her father was a film director. and she started her career as a child actress, following the footsteps of her older sister, Feyrouz, who was a very famous child actress before her. She appeared in a dozen movies as a child, and also took part in radio serials, and in theatrical works. Her fame grew larger in 1966, at age 17, with the first film in which she had the lead role, "Al Murahiqa as Saghira". One of her most critically acclaimed roles was the secondary role she played in "Al Azab Imra'a". She has more than 60 films to her credit. The majority of these are musicals, or films with a thread of plot and drama that is punctuated intermittently with song and dance. Most of them have a comic spirit. Nelly has also acted in a number of straight melodrama TV series, most notably "Bardis" and "Ad Dawwama".
Fawazir Nelly
From among the large amount of her artistic work, Nelly is best known throughout the Arab World for her "Fawazir Ramadan" . This is a set of TV comedy shows with lots of music and dancing, with Nelly the star of the shows. The hugely followed shows were broadcast to tens of major Arab television stations throughout the Arab World on a daily basis during the holy month of Ramadan, mixed with general entertainment segments. Each year's "fawazir" series was held together around a different organizing theme. The shows included: Fawazir Arusty, Fawazir Al Khatbah, Fawazir Alam Wareq, Fawazir Sanduq El Dunya, Fawazir Om El Oreaf, Fawazir Dunya Laaba, Fawazir Zay El Naharda. Nelly's last fawazir was in 1996, but she did a show in the fawazir style called Alf Leila Wa Leila in 2001. Since then, Nelly has turned down a number of proposals to do another fawazir by reason of "a lack of fresh ideas".
Recent years
Nelly has largely retired from making films, comedy shows, and music, but she has been visible as a guest personality on a number of TV talk & entertainment programs. She also served as a judge in 2006 in The X Factor, XSeer Al Najah TV singing talent search show. In January 2010 it was reported that Nelly accepted an actress role in a proposed serious TV drama. If this proposal goes to completion, it will be Nelly's first serious drama role since 1989.
