Trivia

Nihad Alaeddin was once one of the great sirens of Syrian cinema. Working under the stage name Igraa, or Seduction, she embodied the openness and liberalism that reigned in the Arab world during the 1960s and '70s, performing the region's first cinematic nude scene and flippantly telling journalists that "we have to bring sex to the cinema because our audience is frustrated.".

Ighraa is a Syrian actress, writer, director, producer and belly dancer who reached her fame mostly in Syrian cinema of the 1970s.

As a teenager in the late 1950s, she traveled with her older sister to Cairo, where an Egyptian impresario renamed them Seduction and Charm and made them a successful belly-dancing duo who toured Europe and Asia in daringly scanty outfits. In the late 1970s the Islamic revival began, taking with it Igraa's sister. She took the veil and became a conservative Muslim, discarded the name Charm, and now refuses to talk about her belly-dancing past.

She dropped out of school in the fifth grade and moved to Cairo at the age of 13.

She chose a lower profile but has remained a symbol of "openness and liberalism that reigned in the Arab world during the 1960s and 70s.

Igraa's breakthrough came in 1970 with the film "The Leopard," widely considered to have established modern Syrian cinema at a time when Egypt dominated the business. During filming, the producers and director worried that the story - about a Robin Hood figure in the mountains of northern Syria - might not get the attention it deserved without some kind of lure. They asked Igraa, who played the protagonist's wife, to do a nude scene. She surprised them by agreeing almost at once.

She made dozens of films, many of them tawdry affairs with a lot of bikini scenes and not much plot. But she also wrote 25 screenplays, and she casts her work as an effort to break down patriarchal attitudes toward women.

She has won many awards at festivals in Syria and abroad.

Unlike many other actresses of her era, she refuses to apologize for any of her numerous risqué roles, and even defends her sexual freedom in a way that is almost unheard of in this increasingly conservative country.

After training with the legendary Egyptian belly dancer Tahia Carioca, she danced with her sister for several years, and then began acting in television dramas. She went on to become a leading actress, screenwriter and director.