Nadia Karam was an Egyptian actress who spent almost her entire life in Kuwait and became a familiar comic face of Kuwaiti and wider Gulf television drama. Born Mona Sayed Ahmed Abdullah in Saudi Arabia on 24 March 1959 to an Egyptian father and a Lebanese mother, she moved to Kuwait with her family when she was about a year old. She grew up there, learned to speak the Kuwaiti dialect so naturally that many viewers assumed she was Kuwaiti, and built a screen career that ran from the late 1990s into the early 2020s.
Karam entered the profession in 1996 or 1997, according to differing accounts, at the same time as her younger sister, the actress Abeer Ahmed. Both began with small parts. Her early credits included the series Souq Al-Maqasees, in which she won attention playing a Lebanese mother, Um Rami Sanoubar. Her breakthrough came when the Kuwaiti star Hayat Al-Fahad, who wrote the 2002 series Al-Sharib Bizza, gave her the role of Khadija. That part made her known to Gulf audiences, and she went on to play Maysoon in the 2003 Ramadan series Al-Hayala, written by Fajr Al-Saeed and starring Abdulhussain Abdulredha and Khaled Al-Nafisi. For many viewers she remained "Maysoon Al-Hayala" for the rest of her life.
Over the following two decades she became a reliable supporting player in Kuwaiti comedy and family drama. Her credits included Khalti wa Ammati, Fereej Swaileh, Alaik Saeed wa Mubarak, Ahlam Tawash, Mudhakarat Amouna, Dar Al-Zaman, Taxi Taht Al-Talab, Al-Ikhtiyar Al-Saab, Al-Khafi Aadham, Al-Bait Al-Maskoon, Al-Raha and Saad wa Khawatah, alongside many television evenings, programmes and stage plays. The Arabic film database elCinema lists more than one hundred acting credits for her, with her last listed work dating from 2021. She was cast mostly in comic roles, and she appeared as a guest on Kuwaiti television interviews, where she talked about her life, her age and her attachment to Kuwait.
Although she lived in Kuwait for about six decades, she never held Kuwaiti citizenship. In December 2022 Kuwaiti media reported that she had been held for about ten days by the deportation department because her residence permit had expired months earlier without renewal, and that she had then been deported permanently to Egypt. The decision provoked a wave of sympathy on social media, with many viewers arguing that an artist who had worked alongside the biggest names in Kuwaiti drama deserved better treatment.
Her final years in Egypt were difficult. In October 2026 she appeared in widely shared videos describing her worsening health and finances. She said she suffered from slipped discs, worn cartilage in four vertebrae, joint pain and numbness in her limbs, and that she could not afford treatment or surgery. She described being unable to afford an air conditioner for her apartment, saying she was "alive and not alive", and appealed to business people and public figures for help. She also said she was ready to return to acting. The appeal turned into a public dispute with her sister Abeer Ahmed, who said she had supported Nadia for years and was herself being treated for myasthenia gravis, while Nadia disputed that account. On 25 October 2026 the Kuwaiti presenter May Al-Eidan documented a donation of household appliances to her from a well-wisher.
Nadia Karam died on Wednesday 28 October 2026, aged 67, after a period of illness. The news was announced that evening by May Al-Eidan on Instagram and Facebook, and Abeer Ahmed mourned her sister in an Instagram story, writing that she mourned "my sister Nadia, who has passed into the mercy of God". The specific medical cause of death, and the arrangements for her funeral and burial, had not been made public at the time this profile was written.
She is remembered as one of the Arab artists who, without Gulf nationality, became part of the fabric of Kuwaiti television, and as a performer whose late struggles prompted a wider conversation about how the region cares for veteran artists.
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From social media
1Posts by Nadia, and posts about them, kept here so they are not lost.