Water plays a prominent role in crops production. Field experiments were conducted at El-Karada Research Station, Kafr El-Sheikh, Egypt during summer seasons of 2014 and 2015. The experiment investigated the effect of water deficit at different critical physiological stages to inspect the impacts of water withholding on water use efficiency (WUE), plant growth and yield of some rice cultivars. Results revealed that the growth characteristics as well as grain yield and its attributes were decreased by the irrigation withholding treatments at any growth stages in both seasons of the study. Continuous flooding (CF) throughout the grown seasons led to the highest values of growth parameters and grain yield followed by water withholding 12 days at mid-tillering(MT), while the lowest values obtained when the plants were subjected to water stress 12 days at heading (H) and panicle initiation (PI) stages. Water stress at MT stage gave the highest values of WUE (0.810 and 0.819 kgm^-3) with the lowest values of yield reduction (5.14 and 4.30 %) and its water save was amounted to be (6.37 and 6.74 %) in both seasons, respectively. The results also revealed that the Egyptian hybrid 1 rice cultivar surpassed the other two studied cultivars which is more tolerant to water stress as well as recorded the highest water use efficiency. It could be concluded that water deficit at both PI and H stages must be avoided to obtain considerable rice grain yield. In case of severe shortage of water resources, water withholding 12 days at MT stage could be applied due to its tolerant of WUE as well as reduction of the yield.