CAIRO (AP) — Born Michael Shalhoub in Egypt’s Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria, Sharif was the son of Christian Syrian-Lebanese parents.
After working three years at his father’s lumber company, he fulfilled his longtime ambition to become a movie actor, going on to appear in nearly two dozen Egyptian films under the name Omar el Sharif.
In “Lawrence of Arabia,” Omar Sharif is first seen in the distance, a speck in the swirling desert sand. As he draws closer, he emerges first as a black figure on a galloping camel, slowly transforming into a handsome, dark-eyed figure with a gap-tooth smile. It wasn’t unlike the Egyptian-born actor’s debut in Hollywood.
Interesting trivia: Sharif was one of the top 50 contract bridge players in the world. This takes tremendous memory, of which he had very little in the years leading to his death.
The more you know…
RIP Sherif Ali Yuri Zhivago Major Grau. Thanks for the quality entertainment.
RIP
Enjoyed “Lawrence of Arabia” very much.
Watched him in Funny Girl with Streisand just this past weekend.
Quite the looker in his youth. Dr. Zhivago one of my favorites.
What a beautiful handsome man…..
Meh. He converted to Islam for his wife (whom he wound up divorcing anyway), and if memory serves, he slugged a woman in an airport for being an uppity female. He had some anger issues. The blurb on him slugging a valet about 10 years ago, is still unscrubbed.
He who has never sinned, cast the first stone
Gave his soul away for a piece of ass.
“He was also notorious for a violent temper. Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said wrote that Sharif was the school bully at Alexandria’s Victoria College which they both attended as young boys. In 2003 after losing at a Paris casino, Sharif argued with a croupier and head-butted a policeman. That got him a $1,700 fine and a one-year suspended sentence. In 2007, he punched a Beverly Hills parking valet who refused to accept payment in Euros. He pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor battery charge and had to take an anger management course.”
No one is casting the first stone, just simply pointing out some of his personality traits. He had issues, maybe he should have taken up football or boxing instead of acting.
Really – Edward Said? EDWARD SAID!? Professional “Public Intellectual?” Columbia/Princeton/Harvard grad & professor who called for the establishment of a Palestinian state?
This guy? “So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists. What we have, instead, is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression.”
Intellectuals just never get tired of being right, do they.
I’ll bet that to this wavy gravy insufferable, Pali loving, Ivy League professional intellectual, Omar Sharif WAS a bully.
He didn’t age well, as I remember.
What guy hasn’t, from time to time?
: }
But seriously, Sharif was an Egyptian, so when he starred in “Funny Girl” with Barbra Streisand (and particularly when he had a brief affair with her), his fellow Egyptians wanted to disown him for consorting with a Jewess. Needless to say, Barbra’s Jewish momma and other friends and relatives weren’t too happy with the situation, either.
Seems like the poor guy couldn’t please anybody on either side of the fence.
Might account for some of the anger issues.
🙂
RIP, Omar – Like Sinatra, you
did it your way.
Boy, howdy. He was just … pretty.
Another good movie he was is was The Yellow Rolls-Royce .
The 13th Warrior…loved that film…although Banderes is a pinko…
As a bridge player, I admired his incredible skill at the game.
Plus the fact that he must have played with poor vision, considering he actually dated Streisand.
May the souls of the faithful departed, through the Mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
Amen.
Saw him playing the title role of St. Peter in an Italian TV movie . He was awe inspiring .
May he rest in peace .