“From the age of 31, I have lived in hotels.”
Omar Sharif
Introduction
If you had to give an example of sex appeal, Omar Sharif would be my choice—this suave Egyptian actor with dark looks and an accent as smooth as melted chocolate was a natural. An actor whose career spanned over 50 years, starring in over 100 films. A mix of British, French and Italian productions. The star of Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia and Funny Girl broke many barriers by becoming the only Arabic actor to unlock the door to Hollywood stardom. A man who hated method acting and preferred the company of women and cards to the hype of stardom. Humble and reserved with a glint in his eyes, Omar was a cut above the rest. Someone who the film director David Lean loved working with. A natural in front of the camera and a screen presence that the viewer is never tired of.
The Egyptian Way
Born in 1932 in Alexandria, Egypt, with the birth name Michel Yusuf Dimitri Chalhoub, Omar was an overweight child whose mother, Claire Saada, played cards and socialised with King Farouk. Yet, at home, she was a matriarchal tyrant, handing out daily beatings to her son with a slipper. A painful routine that continued until Sharif was 14. Despite her cruelty, her son remained close to her until she died in 1998. His father, Yusef, was a precious-woods merchant. A business that his son later worked in. The family moved from Alexandria to Cairo when Omar was four. After attending Victoria College, Alexandria, he would attain a degree in mathematics and physics at Cairo University.
After working for his father, Sharif began an acting career in Egypt. He changed his name to his stage name, Omar Sharif, in 1955. Starting in Egyptian cinema, they starred in a swathe of films, beginning with The Blazing Sun in 1954 and ending with There Is a Man in Our House in 1961. Yet, his first English-speaking film didn’t come until 1962, when David Lean was cast in the epic Lawrence of Arabia. He was playing the fictitious Sherif Ali, a character not seen in T.E. Lawrence’s book Seven Pillars of Wisdom but who acted as a critical ally between the dubious Arab Bedouins and the British forces led by Lawrence. Beautifully shot in Jordan, Spain and Morocco, the film displays Lean’s brilliant eye for drama, epic scenes and breathtaking camera work in Super Panavision 70 and a musical score by Maurice Jarre. His casting is fitting for this historical story, an endless list of stars, including Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quale and Jack Hawkins, that shows the challenges and heartbreak of being an extraordinary man. A man of destiny who brought two nations together in a backdrop of war and civil unrest. A prize that could only be achieved when they had quieted Aqaba and Damascus. A film that was nominated for ten Oscars and received seven, as well as a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA. It is considered to be one of the greatest films ever made.
Sharif would star in The Fall of the Roman Empire, a commercial flop, The Yellow Rolls Royce, Genghis Khan and Marco the Magnificient. As part of a seven-year film deal, he had to sign with Columbia to secure his role in Lawrence of Arabia. A contract that ensured him $50,000 per film. In 1965, Omar teamed up with David Lean again for the film adaptation of Boris Pasternak’s 1957 novel Doctor Zhivago—a movie where he played Yuri Zhivago, a poet and physician. Alec Guinness, Julie Christie, Rod Steiger, Tom Courtney, Ralph Richardson, Geraldine Chaplin and Rita Tushingham also starred. The film cemented Omar’s brilliant acting and showed how great Lean was—a tried and tested director who knew what he wanted and often used actors repeatedly. Alec Guinness is one such example. Using the haunting music of Maurice Jarre, it won five Oscars and five Golden Globes. An Anglo-Italian production with Carlo Ponti, this Russian love story runs for over three hours, and the book was banned in Russia for decades. It remains one of the highest-grossing films of all time. A film that was made in Soria, Spain.
Funny Girl would follow in 1968, working alongside Barbara Streisand. A film that angered the Egyptian government as Streisand supported the State of Israel. It would be followed by The Tamarind Seed in 1974 with Julie Andrews. Sharif would continue acting until 2013, His last film being Rock the Casbah. However, as the years progressed, the parts offered were of varying quality. He freely admitted that he lost interest in acting and found bad dialogue difficult and so dull. He worked with several directors in his later career that he considered stupid.
Off-Screen
Omar Sharif loved women but had a long marriage to Faten, which lasted from 1955 to 1974. Yet, unlike his softly-spoken characters, he did have a trend of seeing red. He received a one-month suspended sentence and €1,500 for head-butting a police officer in a Parisian casino in 2003. In 2005, he was ordered to attend anger management classes after assaulting a Beverly Hills parking attendant. He was also caught on camera slapping a journalist in Doha in 2011 after she attempted to take a photograph of him at the international film festival. Yet all these cases were most likely to have been due to the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. A man who considered himself to be ordinary and no super-lover. He was once staying in a Dallas hotel when a drunk Texan woman knocked on his door at two o’clock in the morning and demanded he make love to her. She then took a revolver out of her bag and made him take his clothes off. She then lay on the bed and lifted her skirt. She had no knickers on. The woman said, “Make love to me. To which Omar replied, pointing at his penis, “Madam, I would love to, but it is not possible at the moment”. The woman started insulting him, saying he was a fraud, but with a gun pointed at your head, this would put you off. She then walked out of the hotel room in disgust.
Omar loved to play bridge and gamble. He lost most of his wealth to the addiction. He only won once. At a film evening in Italy in 1966, sitting next to a beautiful woman with ample cleavage, he decided to flirt with her, and they ended up in a discotheque kissing. Omar asked her to return to her hotel room, but she refused. Deflated, Sharif decided to go to the casino. All his numbers came up on the roulette table. He won a pile of money and quickly dashed back to Rome, fearing being robbed. He counted the money and found he had won $1,164,000. He then called Interflora and asked for their entire supply of flowers to be sent to this woman. Twenty-five tonnes of flowers in five trucks were sent to her hotel. With the driver was a card with the words, “You would have been the most expensive fuck I have ever had”.
A man who could speak six languages fluently: Arabic, English, French, Italian, Greek and Spanish. He once said on Aspel and Company that he would have preferred to have been a woman. He considered many men to be children who had never grown up. Despite his attractiveness, Omar admitted he remained single in his later years. Despite many offers, he never found the one to spend the rest of his life with.
In 2015, it was announced by his son Tarek that Omar had the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Although he still knew he was a famous actor, he began to forget who people were. Staying in a hotel, he liked the same routine of sitting on his balcony, watching the world go by. However, he didn’t like change and hated breaking routines, especially going out. He died after suffering a heart attack on 12 July 2015 at a hospital in Cairo—a brilliant actor who captured the hearts of filmgoers for generations.
