A Tribute to Omar Sharif back to homepage

"A democracy isn't good for everybody," the 71-year-old Egyptian-Lebanese actor warned Sunday at the Capri-Hollywood Film & Music Fest on the Italian island of Capri.

"A democracy is good for educated people. The moment the troops leave Iraq, that culture will return to its old tribal governing ways."

Sharif, a master strategist in the game of bridge, if not foreign policy, went on: "People who are poor worry about food for their families. That's true in any country. You give them $5 and you can buy their vote. That's true everywhere - in Iraq and even here in Italy."

So was Bush wrong to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein?

"If he went to Iraq to remove a tyrant, he was right," Sharif answered. "If he went to Iraq to achieve a democracy, he was wrong. If he went to Iraq to remove weapons of mass destruction, he was wrong, because there never were any."

Sharif continued: "So many tyrants in this world, why this one? There is more reason to attack North Korea. And Pakistan has the atomic bomb."

Asked if he suspects that the United States' real reason was Iraqi oil, he vigorously nodded yes.

Sharif, who achieved stardom with memorable roles in "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Dr. Zhivago," is enjoying something of a comeback. He is featured in the upcoming Viggo Mortensen vehicle "Hidalgo," and last night he received the Capri Legend Award for lifetime achievement.

Grandpa Omar
Leah McLaren, Globe and Mail , December 16, 2003

Toronto — Aging screen legend.Can a story about Omar Sharif possibly avoid including those three words in its first paragraph? Unlikely. And the 71-year-old actor to whom the phrase is so often attributed is happy to live up to his unofficial title. Strolling into a suite at the Intercontinental Hotel in Toronto, Sharif is beaming with the black-eyed intensity that made him famous nearly half a century ago as Peter O'Toole's Arab ally in Lawrence of Arabia. Now here is a man who can kiss a woman's hand in the year 2003 and get away with it.

Settling into his chair, Sharif takes a deep, kingly breath through his nose and announces that he had a wonderful sleep last night and is now completely over his jet-lag after flying in from Paris (where he resides) two days before.

"I am in a good mood," he says, with a fiery grin that suggests you wouldn't want to see him in a bad one.

The actor is in Toronto promoting his new film, Monsieur Ibrahim, which screened in September at the Toronto International Film Festival (a Canadian release is expected early in the new year). In it, Sharif plays an elderly immigrant Muslim corner-store owner living in Paris in the 1960s. Written and directed by François Dupeyron, the French-language film chronicles the friendship between an adolescent Jewish boy from a troubled home and the wise but cheeky Monsieur Ibrahim.

The coming-of-age story is sweet, but not unconventional, and the character Monsieur Ibrahim risks treading into clichéd, kindly-old-mentor territory. In Sharif's hands, however, the character takes on subtler proportions. It's a role he is proud of. In fact, it's the first movie he's done for anything other than a paycheque in a long time. Before Monsieur Ibrahim, Sharif had unofficially retired.

"I hadn't worked for four years before this movie," he says, gesticulating widely with a pair of grandfatherly reading glasses clutched in his left hand. "For the last 25 years I didn't make any decent films. It was ridiculous! I thought, I'd better stop with a little bit of dignity. My grandchildren were starting to make fun of me. That hurt a little."

He pauses for a self-deprecating laugh. He is exaggerating, of course. Sharif's later career has consisted mainly of European movies, not all of them bad, according to critics.

But enduring the mockery of grandchildren was, he jokes, "the most painful thing in the world. I said: I will not work unless it's something I'm enthusiastic about, and naturally I thought that nothing interesting would come out."

Much to his surprise, along came Dupeyron's script. The lead role, Sharif says, could well be his last in a feature film.

"The problem for me is casting. I'm a foreigner in every occidental filmmaking country. I cannot be native in any country. I cannot be an American in an American film or an Englishman in an English film, so you have to wait for parts that suit you. Now when you are young and you are a box-office star, in the old days, they used to write or adapt things to fit my personality and my accent. They would send you a script and you say, 'But the leading man is Norwegian!" and they say, 'Yes he's Norwegian, but we will make him Greek.'

"When you get old and you don't sell tickets in sufficient amounts any more, if there is a part for an Italian old man, then they simply get an old Italian actor. If you need an American old man, then you get an old American actor. I'm not going to sell the movie any more so it doesn't make sense to take me over someone who has the actual nationality of the character."

Sharif's dark beauty and Middle Eastern lilt have caused generations of Western women to swoon. His English-language film debut as Sherif Ali ibn El Karish in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962) made him an instant star in the West. It was an entrance he followed up by playing the title role in Lean's next film, Doctor Zhivago, and later opposite Barbra Streisand's Fanny Brice as the gambling lover, Nicky Arnstein. After Funny Girl, Sharif's films were banned in his native Egypt because he had made love to a Jewish woman on screen. The ban meant little to him professionally at the time -- he was already a huge star in the West, his brooding gaze made world-famous by the role that would follow him around for the rest of life.

"Ah yes, Zhivago," he says with mock annoyance. "Whenever I go any place where there is an orchestra around they start playing the music and, ugh, it's so sentimental! So wishy-washy and horrible."

Sharif has no qualms letting you know exactly what he thinks of his earlier work. Zhivago, he predicts, "will not remain a great film" in the eyes of history. Lawrence of Arabia, on the other hand, is an indisputable masterpiece. It is reminiscing about this first crossover role that Sharif becomes truly animated about his past work.

"Back then I was an Egyptian film actor and I'd made 22 or 23 films, but [Lawrence of Arabia] was my first crossover. They were making it across the border in Jordan and they couldn't find anyone who was suitable for the part, and Sam Spiegel somehow somewhere saw an Egyptian film of mine and he said to David Lean, 'I saw an Egyptian young man who looks fantastic and has a tremendous screen personality. I don't know if he speaks English, but I'm going to go to Cairo and find out.' And so Sam Spiegel came to Cairo and he found out that I spoke English and then he took me over to Jordan and we had a screen test. And that was that."

Born into a wealthy Lebanese-Egyptian family, Sharif had a gilded childhood, attending French and English schools before becoming a math and physics major at Cairo's Victory College. He worked briefly in his father's lumber business before going into acting. He likes to tell the story of how his career as a leading man was made by his mother -- "a terrible, wonderful person" -- who sent him to an English boarding school to prevent him from getting fat as a child.

"Not only did I lose weight," he says, "I learned English! Otherwise I would never have been a [Hollywood] actor."

A screen veteran with more than 70 films under his belt, Sharif has seen a couple of generations of filmmakers come and go over the course of his career. The business of being a box-office star, he says, is very different today than it once was. For one thing, looks are not as important.

"In those days when you had your stars in a film, you used to really look after them, make them look as good as possible, light them as well as you possibly could. And they taught us, 'Here is your light, and move your head like this,' and so on. In my opinion the actors of today act better, because they are more naturalistic and they look like normal people. The big stars that you see today in the cinema are not handsome! In the old days, when I was a child, we used to go to the cinema and see Tyrone Power and Robert Taylor -- these men who were sublimely beautiful, but could they act? Not really. Today you go and see Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro -- they look awful, but they sure can act."

While he rarely goes to the movies, Sharif says he doesn't sit around and reminisce about the old days either. These days he is trying to live "totally and completely, every fibre of my body, in the present moment." He recently quit bridge, his great passion of many years, and claims also to have stopped gambling.

"I don't want to be enslaved by any passion any more," he says.

But he is not entirely without vices. In August, Sharif was convicted of head-butting a police officer at a casino in Paris after becoming enraged during a game of high-stakes roulette (he had reportedly lost 30,000 euros).

For now, however, Sharif is determined to play the doting grandfather. Tomorrow night he will have dinner with his grandson, the son of a Canadian woman from Montreal, who is currently attending Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. Like many men who lived fast in their youth, Sharif has mellowed and now regrets not having spent more time with his family.

"I didn't spend enough time with them over the years that I worked and played bridge and went to racing," he says. "Now we get together and I enjoy very much playing the role of the grandfather. I boss them around till they go crazy!"

Sharif flashes a satisfied smile and leans back in his chair. What a suave granddaddy he is.

The rake's progress
Sixties heartthrob Omar Sharif reflects on a life of wine, women and gambling; discusses his new film, "Monsieur Ibrahim"; and explains why God was unfair in making him so handsome.

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By Amy Reiter, Salon

Dec. 8, 2003 | In François Dupeyron's cinematic confection "Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran," Omar Sharif plays an old Muslim shopkeeper in 1960s Paris who dispenses sweet nuggets of wisdom to a young Jewish boy slightly lonelier and much, much sadder than he. (The film, in French with English subtitles, is now playing in New York and Los Angeles and thus will be eligible for the 2003 Oscars; a modest national rollout is due next month.)

"Smiling is what makes you happy," Sharif's M. Ibrahim tells young Momo, tenderly played by Pierre Boulanger, who drinks in his advice like nectar. "Try it, you'll see."

Sharif himself takes a similar don't-worry-be-happy view of life. Now 71, the roguishly handsome Egyptian actor, who dominated the box office in the early 1960s with hits like "Lawrence of Arabia," "Doctor Zhivago" and "Funny Girl," is looking back on a life lived passionately -- drinking good wines, dining on rich foods, romancing beautiful women, traveling the world, gambling much of his money away in casinos, competing at bridge and even getting into the occasional headline-making scuffle.

"I cannot stand the idea of having money in the bank and not spending it," he says. "It tempts me ... makes me want to do something exciting, rich."

Recently Sharif, who now lives in Paris, decided to renounce all passions in order to spend time with his family. He also decided to take a break from making bad films -- "25 years of rubbish," he says, "not one decent film" -- in order to wait for a role he could really feel proud of. When "Monsieur Ibrahim" came along with its message of religious tolerance and unlikely brotherhood, he knew he'd found just the role to sink his trademark gap-teeth into.

Grayer and growlier than he was in his heartthrob heyday, but no less charming, elegant and charismatic, Sharif met with Salon over coffee at a New York hotel one recent afternoon. (He does not do mornings, he says: "When there's no more light out, I'm happy") He looked deep into our eyes and told us a few of the things he's learned over the years.

"Monsieur Ibrahim" is your first movie in four years. Why this movie now?

There's too much violence around and this is a small but tender and gentle movie, and I really loved making it. I made it for my soul -- I didn't expect it to come to America. I thought it might stay two weeks in a cinema in Paris and that's it. But I liked the film and also I hadn't made a statement yet about the Middle East situation, and I felt I should because I am a loved person in the Middle East. I wanted to give my opinion -- that we can live together, we can love each other, it is not impossible. Stop killing each other. Sit and talk and be together. Making this movie might not change anything, but at least I know I said what I had on my mind.

So you felt like the film carried a message you'd been longing to convey?

Yes, but it's a fable. It's not reality, although it's based on the author's life. When I was thinking about my character, I wondered, how come this guy has had this grocery for maybe 40, 50 years and when the other customers come in, he never talks to them? He doesn't say, "How's your mother? How's your sister? How's your son?" He speaks only to this boy. When the boy isn't there, he doesn't exist. We never see him except when the boy walks in, as if his existence is tied to the boy's life. And he reads his mind. When the boy at the beginning is thinking, "Oh, he's only an Arab." Monsieur Ibrahim says, "I am not an Arab, Momo. I come from the Golden Crescent."

I wanted to make Ibrahim light and like a child. Obviously this man was lonely, but he was waiting for a child to play with, to be young with. When after a while, gradually, Monsieur Ibrahim and Momo become friends, they have fun together: they take the car and take driving lessons and go traveling. It's happy -- real happiness -- like two children having fun. That's what I wanted to put in this film.

Do you feel you succeeded in getting across what you wanted to?

Well, we needed to put one more little thing into the film. We needed one scene during the voyage where we are totally happy. Where the boy is laughing and is really having a good time, just laughing his head off, because he's very somber and life was so miserable. It needed just this one more little scene. I didn't notice it when I read it nor when I was shooting it, but when I saw it, I realized it needed this one scene.

At one point, your character does say, "I'm happy, Momo."

Yes, when I'm dying. It is the last lesson that I'm giving to the boy: How to die, that dying is not something terrible. "I am not dying," he says to Momo, because Momo is crying. "I'm just going to the immensity." It's something to smile about, not to be sad.

Did you bring anything from your own life to the role?

I don't know whether he brought it to me or I brought it to him, because we ended up being exactly the same. I mean, I have now the same opinions as M. Ibrahim. Something happened in that film that made me agree with everything he says.

You see, I have this relationship with my grandson. I have two grandchildren. One is 20 and he's Jewish, and one is 4 and he's Muslim. They're brothers and they love each other. My son married an Orthodox Polish Jewish woman, and then he married a Catholic who didn't have children and now he's married to a Muslim girl and he's got this little boy. And I play with my grandchildren like mad, like a child. I risk breaking my back sometimes -- I roll on the ground. So maybe this is it, I love children, love to play with them, and M. Ibrahim obviously was waiting to have a child.

And you were waiting for this film. You were retired for a while, weren't you?

I had decided not to work anymore just to earn money to eat. I decided that I would not work if I didn't find something good. I decided to stop unless something good came along, something that I liked, that I wanted to make an effort for, and do it with pleasure, with passion.

What was the last worthwhile film you made?

It was years ago. See, what happened was after I made my three famous films -- "Lawrence" and "Zhivago" and "Funny Girl" -- I made good choices. I had five films with great directors; they were flops. And after five flops in the movie business, it's very difficult to find parts, especially since I'm a foreigner. I'm not a Spanish foreigner and I'm not an Italian foreigner and I'm not a French foreigner. I'm a foreigner -- to everyplace. When I was a box-office draw, they used to cast me as anything -- I played German officers, I played Russian poets, I played a New York Jew. As long as you're a box-office draw, you can play anything. But once you aren't so big at the box office, they're not so interested, or they only ask for you if they need an Arab. If they need an Arab, they call me, but Arab parts are often in bad films and caricatures -- so uninteresting. And I had to work to support my family. I was exiled, myself, from Egypt, because I was working only with Jewish people. And I was worried that they would take it out on my parents, so I took everybody out -- my father, my mother, my sister, my son, my nephews, my nieces -- and I resettled them. So I had a big family to look after and I had a secretary and a housekeeper and cook -- all the big expenses to keep a big family like that.

That's a big responsibility.

Well, that's normal. Everyone has responsibilities.

Not everyone has to take care of their entire extended family.

Yes, but I was making a lot of money, so it wasn't a problem as long as I kept working.

So you were working in order to support them and you no longer have to do that?

I have enough money to live for three or four years without working, so I will do that if nothing good comes along. And then, if I am still alive, I will have to do something, I don't know what, to make some money. And I hope that my son -- he's 46 and I set him up with a beautiful shmata business, you know; he makes shirts and clothes for men -- and I hope that he will make some money so that he can support me when I'm old.

That's right. At 46, the parent-child balance shifts a little.

But he's a lousy businessman. He's as bad at business as I am -- except he thinks he's good. I'm bad, but I know I'm bad. He's bad and he thinks he's great.

That sounds dangerous. Let's talk about bridge for a little bit.

I've given that up.

Why?

I don't want to be a slave to any passion any longer. I gave up all the things that I was passionate about, so that I can be -- if a good film comes, I can be passionate now about it. I am now passionate about being with my family, because I haven't spent enough time with them. I live in the moment now. I don't want to think of the past and I don't want to think of the future. I want to concentrate on every instance of my life because that's what's important. When I talk to you, I don't think of anything else except our conversation, nothing that came before and nothing that comes afterwards.

How long did you play bridge?

I started when I was 21 and then bridge became very important to me, especially in this period when I was making these bad films. I became a great bridge player and therefore I kept some self-esteem -- that I was good at something that I was doing, that I was successful at something. And I went to casinos and I gambled and I led a very crazy life so that I would not think about the lousy films I was making and wouldn't be humiliated by it.

So now you're not playing at all?

I play for charities. I have some charities that I work for, so when I want to raise money sometimes I organize a bridge tournament and auction off professional bridge players and myself. People pay money to play with me and it goes to support charity.

And you wrote a bridge column for a while, right?

Yes, but that's not me. It was by friends of mine who wanted to make some money. They asked me if they could borrow my name so that they could be published and I said OK. I never got money for it. It was one of the largest syndicated columns in the world. It ran in hundreds of daily newspapers, but I don't know how many papers ran it in the States, because I never got money for it.

It was written under your byline, but you didn't make a cent? Your friends made all the money?

Yeah, they made some money. Why not? I want to earn my money from acting. I don't want to earn money any other way. It doesn't interest me. I don't invest, for instance, in the stock market or in anything. I don't have a house. I earn money, I spend it.

What do you spend it on?

On crazy things. I have to spend it. On dinners. I buy racehorses. If I can't find any other way I go and gamble it away or something. I cannot stand the idea of having money in the bank and not spending it. It tempts me. The fact that I have money makes me want to do something exciting, rich. You know, to have the best wine and the best food. But if I'm poor, when I don't have money, I don't mind having a sandwich and a beer.

It sounds like you've gone through a tremendous amount of changes in your lifetime.

You have to. People don't stay always the same. No one is always something. You can't be the same at 20 as at 70. It's impossible. It's stupid. If you don't change, then you're very unhappy. See, the great secret of happiness is something very simple: to be satisfied with every age you are. Not to be 20 and want to be 30. Not to be 50 and want to be 40. And not to be 70 and want to be 16. Because all these ages have their own pleasures. I have my pleasures. If I was not my age, I would not have two grandchildren whom I can love and talk to and play with and be proud of. See? All these things are part of pleasures that I couldn't have had before when I was younger. And if I had not made 25 lousy films, I wouldn't be happy to make one little film that I like.

That's a very M. Ibrahim-like thing to say. What's your next good film going to be?

I made a film for Walt Disney ["Hidalgo," with Viggo Mortensen] which I had a very nice part in, long dialogue scenes. I like to work out how I'm going to speak them and what the rhythm should be and how quick it should go and how slowly. You know, it's fun. Acting is fun. The film doesn't have to terrific, but at least my part has to be interesting, or I have to be interested in playing my part. That's all I need. I can't guarantee that every time I'm going to be able to make a good film.

Do you go through a specific process in order to inhabit a role?

Once I decide to play something, I think about it all the time, even while I'm eating. I try to get the visual image of the character, first of all, a physical sense of him. You know, for instance, with this film, I realized my shoulders are too broad to play an old man, and so I tried first of all to keep them in, like this, and also, I put on some weight down here [stomach] so that I would be more triangular, like a man who sits on a stool all day. So, you've got to work out the physical thing. Once you've got the physical down, then you start behaving like the character. It inspires you to walk in a certain way. And then come to the part where you have the lines and you imagine what kind of person you are: Are you happy or unhappy, young or old? It's a technical thing. It's for acting schools. It's not for you.

Do you still get recognized a lot and treated like a heartthrob wherever you go?

Not like a heartthrob. I'm too old to be a heartthrob, but yes, I get recognized. The only difference between now and before is that a lot of girls come to ask me for autographs and say, "My mother loved you," "My grandmother loves you." But it moves me much more than if a girl asks me for herself. It moves me because mothers move me, grandmothers move me. When you say, "for my mother or my grandmother," it touches me profoundly, because people love their mothers and their grandmothers and they love the people that their mothers and their grandmothers love, so that by proxy, they love me.

How did you hold onto your sense of self through your years in Hollywood?

That is a matter of education, darling. You know, I never changed since I was 10. I am the same person. I never changed my personality in any way, nor what I think of myself. I never thought that I am a genius or that I was important just because I had success. It didn't go to my head in any way. But that is upbringing. I was lucky because in my time, parents didn't divorce. They stayed married all their lives, my parents. My mother was always there when I was eating and when I was doing my homework and she used to put me, when I made mistakes, on the sofa on my tummy and take her slipper off and gave me a little spanking. It didn't hurt so much. It's nice to know that someone is there, caring for you, wanting you to be good, wanting you to improve yourself, to be perfect. My mother helped me to be somebody. She had decided that I had to be somebody.

Were you able to be there in the same way for your son?

Well, you see, I divorced my wife when my son was 8 and a half. And my wife [Egyptian actress Faten Hamama], who was a wonderful woman, was very clever, and as I was leaving Egypt, and she was staying because she is a great actress, she said, "Take your son with you, because you'll be able to give him a better education in Europe and in America than I can give him in Egypt." She sacrificed that. So I lived with my son alone. That's why I never remarried and I never wanted a woman in the house. I never wanted him to have a stepmother like the one from "Cinderella." And of course, he missed the maternal affection. So my son, contrary to me, cannot live without a girl with him, because he didn't have his mother around too much.

Whereas I, who had a tremendously motherly mother, a real Jewish mother type who was always on top of me, am not in need so much. The women that I've liked in my life were never the type that were servile. I like a woman who works and then can come back and talk about what she did all day, what I did. I like independent women. I don't like these women who are always there, always cooking. I can't stand that.

The description you have of the contrast between you and your son is remarkably like the two characters in "Monsieur Ibrahim": Momo, who's desperate for parental love, and M. Ibrahim, who's very satisfied with his lot in life.

Yes. It is like that. And it's beautifully written. If you understood French, the language is beautiful. He's a great writer, that guy [screenwriter Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, who also wrote the book and play on which the film is based]. It was so moving to me, this whole relationship between this lonely, unhappy boy and this lonely old man.

How many languages do you speak?

I speak five languages, but I don't have a mother tongue. I have an accent in all five.

Even in Arabic?

I have an accent. When I used to make Egyptian films, the critics used to say, "He's got a little bit of a foreign accent." But you know, the Egyptian women loved my accent. One of the things the women there loved me for was because I didn't speak the way other Egyptians spoke. I have a softer accent and a softer voice. So what was a defect became a positive quality for me.

You clearly work hard at your craft. Were you ever tempted just to coast on your good looks?

No, I have never done that. In fact, I never look in a mirror, unless I have to shave or something. On sets, I never have the makeup person come and hold the mirror. I never look. I am not interested in my looks. I had good looks, I knew it. It's not that I didn't know it. I knew that when I was young I was very good-looking. There's no way of not knowing it. But that I consider a gift from God, a piece of luck. And I never really understood why -- I mean people who believe in God, believe in this -- why should some people be so favored in life and other people be so not favored? I mean, people who are born poor in Bangladesh or in Rwanda with no food and famines and floods and all sorts of bad things happening in their countries, or they're crippled or they're ugly.

And then you create someone who's handsome, and my parents were wealthy. I always thought it was so unfair because I was born in a country where you saw people who were poor, you saw them dying of hunger. That's why I almost didn't want my beauty, my good looks. I resented the fact that I was so lucky in the middle of unlucky people.

The lonely lion

An international star for nearly 50 years, Omar Sharif remains a solitary man

BY STEPHEN WHITTY
Star-Ledger, Sunday, December 07, 2003

The old man prowls the Manhattan hotel suite, frowning. With his thick hair and light beard he looks a little like a lion, and even if this is a lion in winter, he has not lost his teeth.

"No, that's enough," he says sharply to the photographer, when he feels the shoot has gone on too long. "No. No, we are quite done."

"You have admired my films?" he repeats to me, mockingly. "No, not all of them, certainly. Not for the last 25 years, I am sure."

A son of Middle East privilege, a one-time sex symbol on six continents, Omar Sharif still carries himself like the pop-culture king he once was.

Still, it has been a while since he reigned.

"Lawrence of Arabia" -- the classic that introduced the Egyptian star to the rest of the world -- was more than 40 years ago. His last credit was a small role in 1999's bizarre and bloody "The 13th Warrior." Most of his movies have been, by his own admission, "unfortunate."

"Look, when I made 'Lawrence' I took my family out of Egypt, and I had to support all these people," he says, the words coming out in a torrent once we begin. "I had to work all the time, at whatever ... But when my grandchildren came along, and started making fun of my films -- I said that's the limit, I can't have my grandson losing respect for me. And so I retired, and didn't work for four years."

"Then," he says, "this script came along."

The script was for a small French film called "M. Ibrahim," now playing in New York. Set in an ethnic quarter of early '60s Paris, it's the story of a gentle friendship between two unlikely characters: a young Jewish boy, and an old Muslim shopkeeper. Although the cultural differences are huge, what they end up sharing is far greater.

"He put a lot of himself into it," director Francois Dupeyron says, on the phone from Paris. "A lot of his kindness, a lot of his life is in the film ... He brought all his knowledge of his profession and yet the enthusiasm as if it were his first film."

"I thought it was time for me to make a statement that we can all love each other, Arabs and Jews and everyone," Sharif declares. "I felt I had to get that off my chest or feel like a coward for the rest of my life ... It is a small story, a little fable really, but the history we're living right now makes it very relevant."

Sharif knows this kind of coexistence is possible. He's seen it in his own life. The son of a wealthy and "very devout" Roman Catholic family, he converted to Islam half-a-century ago to marry his wife, Egyptian movie star Faten Hamama.

"My son obviously learned from me, because he has married three times -- to an Orthodox Jewish girl, to a Catholic girl, and now to a Muslim girl," Sharif says with a smile. "I have a Jewish grandson, for whom I gave the biggest bar mitzvah in Canada. Because I wanted him to know I didn't care what he was and I didn't want him to care what I was ... To me, there are only two categories of people in the world: Good and bad."

Born in Alexandria 71 years ago, as Michael Shalhoub, Sharif grew up as the son of a prosperous lumber merchant. Because his parents preferred "snobbish colonial schools," they enrolled him in a posh local academy full of the sons of French expatriates.

"I became very fat by the time I was 10, because I loved all the biscuits and cakes," he remembers. "And my mother, who had always thought I'd be a genius of some kind, did not like this. So she asked herself, 'Who has the worst food in the world?' And so she put me in an English boarding school instead, with all that dreadful cabbage and brussel sprouts."

Sharif quickly lost the weight. He also, just as rapidly, learned English -- and a love of the theater, as he began to join in the school plays, starting with a little melodrama called "The Invisible Duke."

"I played the leading role, of course," he says, still proud after 60 years, "and I fell in love with the other boys applauding me, and looking at me in class the next day with great admiration ... It changed my life, really. And all because my mother thought I was getting fat."

Sharif went on to college, to major in math and physics, and began working part-time in the family business -- "my father had this dream to put '& Son' after his name." But soon he felt the pull back to acting.

Much to his family's dismay -- "Oh, they were desperate" -- he left school and began making movies. An immediate matinee idol in Egypt, he soon starred in pictures with titles like "Rendezvous With a Stranger" and "Training for Love."

And then came director David Lean, and "Lawrence."

"Making that film, it was like being in the army," Sharif says. "No women, 300 miles from the nearest road, 20 months of shooting. Up at five, sweating, riding horses all day. And then, at night, we would sit outside our tents with a bottle of whiskey, and Peter (O'Toole) and I would talk about the next day, planning what we were to do."

Sharif's entrance in that film -- a long, slow build-up as he rides in from the horizon -- immediately established him as an exotic international star. His behavior off the set just as quickly typed him as a tireless, cosmopolitan playboy.

"Ah, the fleshpots of Beirut!" he says. "Oh yes. We would work three weeks on 'Lawrence,' and then have three days off, and they'd give us a little plane, and Peter and I would go to Lebanon. We'd take these pills that stop you from sleeping, and we'd just stay up for the whole three days going to cabarets and drinking and picking up girls and going back to the desert absolutely destroyed ... But we were young then, and fit."

When "Lawrence" was released in 1962, Sharif received an Oscar nomination, and won two Golden Globes. He starred in Lean's next film, too, "Dr. Zhivago," a surprising blockbuster, and was cast as Nicky Arnstein in the smash 1968 musical "Funny Girl." The teaming with Barbra Streisand cemented his sex symbol status, even as it drew furious criticism at home, coming during a period of heightened Arab/Israeli tensions.

"I was (called) a traitor for kissing this Jewish actress, who was sending money to Israel," he says. "And I said to my son, how stupid people can be! Do you think as I'm going to kiss a girl I stop just before kissing her and say, 'Excuse me, I forgot to ask, are you Jewish?' And if she's Jewish I don't kiss her? What is this? You kiss girls because you want to kiss them, not because they're Jewish or Muslim or black or white. What nonsense!"

Sharif clearly enjoyed kissing girls too, on and off the set, and once he relocated to the United States there was plenty of opportunity. "I moved to Hollywood in the year of women's liberation," he says. "Everyone was throwing off their bras."

In what he still tries to justify as an odd kind of chivalry, Sharif decided to get a "preemptive" divorce in 1974. He explains that he knew he would inevitably fall in love with one of the young women surrounding him, and would want to leave his wife anyway, and so it was better to do it now, before she grew too old to get over him.

Except Sharif says he never did fall in love again. He never remarried, and has spent the last three decades living alone.

"I wonder, still today, if I hadn't gone to Hollywood, would I have been a happier person," he asks. "I had a career in Egypt, I was a star with my wife, I had a beautiful home. So I am now known in Japan. So what?... Maybe I would have had a happier life if I had stayed in Egypt. Maybe I would have been happier if I had never acted at all, and become a fat timber merchant."

Certainly there were times when movie audiences would have been happier too. Although "Funny Girl" was a huge hit, it was also his last. "Mayerling," "The Appointment," "Che," "The Horsemen," "Juggernaut" -- the failures were unending. So were the different nationalities the Egyptian actor was asked to impersonate, not always convincingly.

"I played a German officer, an Austrian prince, Russians -- when you're box office, they offer you every part, no matter what," he says. "I'd say, 'How on earth can I play a Swede?' They would say, 'That's OK, we'll write him Greek.' But once you're not big box office, they don't find these parts for you. If they have a part of an Arab, then they'll call. And it is usually the most cliched, caricatured Arab."

After a smart spy movie with Julie Andrews, "The Tamarind Seed," failed to stir any interest in 1974, and a desperate reprise in "Funny Lady" left audiences cold, Sharif's star slipped even further. By the '80s he was playing small parts in movies like "Oh, Heavenly Dog!" and appearing in Italian miniseries.

Acting simply became a way to support his lifestyle, an elegant one built largely around bridge playing, horse races and fine food. Last year, Sharif was briefly in the papers for headbutting a French policeman who asked him to leave a casino. The actor had been arguing with a croupier after losing a $30,000 bet at roulette, and didn't care for the officer's attitude. He spent the night in jail.

Sharif lives in France, and when he recently landed a part in Disney's upcoming "Hidalgo," it was the first time he had worked in Hollywood in years. ("All the maitre d's remembered me," he claims.) A rootless citizen of the world, he proclaims himself disappointed by both the United States -- "an endless number of foreign-policy mistakes, ever since that idiot John Foster Dulles" -- and the Middle East.

"This business of democratizing the Arabs is not possible," he declares. "Because Arabs are used to having a pharaoh, an emir. They have always been tribal people, always fought tribe against tribe ... These people in Iraq -- they've been warring all their history. All of a sudden they're not going to war anymore, and form a government of the people, by the people, because America says so?"

If "M. Ibrahim" fosters even the smallest bit of understanding between cultures, Sharif says he will be very happy. And if it marks the beginning of a real comeback for him -- well, he will take it. But he is too accomplished a cardplayer to depend on anything.

He has a few projects lined up, though, for the first time in years. In two months he goes to Morocco, to star in a new version of the Gilgamesh epic. His co-star will be Peter O'Toole -- "40 years," Sharif says, "after we finished 'Lawrence,' and stood in that same spot, stamping on our robes and swearing we would never return."

In the meantime, though, he has this small elegant cage to pace, and occasional annoyances on which to sharpen his teeth. Gray with age, he still remains a lion -- even if he no longer races to the hunt and is happiest simply padding about his pleasant cage in Paris.

"You get used to living alone," he says philosophically. "I keep a suite in a hotel during the year. It's nice. When you feel lonely, you go down to the bar. I know the bartender there, and I have my own stool. And when I go out of the hotel, I am prepared to love everybody, every day -- no matter what or who they are."

THE HIGH LIFE

CAIRO FRED

by Dana Goodyear

New Yorker Magazine 2003-12-01

Omar Sharif—Cairo Fred to his friends—has played a bandit and a Catholic priest and Khalil Gibran and Tsar Nicholas II and the British agent Cedric, who gets trash-compacted in “Top Secret!” He is seventy-one. He has wide-set, glistening eyes the color of caviar, though the comparison might not impress him: “Caviar—for me it’s like eating beans.” His hair resembles a mold of white-truffle mousse (“In my hotel”—the Royal Monceau, where he lives, in Paris—“I eat white truffles every night”). His brows are still black. He doesn’t wear makeup, cologne, or aftershave—“never in my life.” He is fearsome: “I have flown millions of miles, millions, in first class—L.A.-Paris, L.A.-New York, China, Egypt, Argentina, Argentina, Argentina—and never gotten a single free mile.” (Sputter, fist slam, hiccup.) “I will take all the airlines down. I will hold a press conference with all the journalists in the world! It’s not the money, it’s the principle!”

If you’re not careful, he’s apt to turn on you. Recently, he spent a night in jail after assaulting a policeman who tried to escort him from the roulette table where he’d lost more than thirty thousand dollars on one bet. “It made me the hero of the whole of France. To head-butt a cop is the dream of every Frenchman.” Catherine Mareska, his assistant of thirty-five years, has a long-suffering look. “It was a Saturday,” she said wearily, about having to fetch him from jail. (Sharif is an expert bridge player, and he has amassed enormous gambling debts over the years.)

The other night, he was eating dinner at “21.” The maître d’ greeted him familiarly, and then steered him to a table and chose a seat for him. “I want to show you to Walter Cronkite,” the maître d’ said, tilting his head at an adjacent group of diners.

“How sweet,” Sharif said, smiling to show the gap between his front teeth.

A waiter who said that he was Turkish brought the first course. “My wife is Egyptian,” he said.

“She makes love pretty good, right?”

“The most loyal woman in the world.”

“She looks after you. Look how you look—like a baby.”

“I’m not joking. She still never ceases to amaze me.”

“Ask her if she has a sister for me.”

Sharif’s latest role is in a French movie called “Monsieur Ibrahim,” which is set in Paris in the nineteen-sixties. He plays an aging Sufi shopkeeper who befriends Momo, a lonely Jewish boy, and convincingly imparts such lessons as “What you give is yours forever. What you keep is lost for all time.” M. Ibrahim has a close and mystical relationship to a higher power; Sharif’s is more mystifying. “I always kind of resented the fact that I was born into a rather wealthy family and was extremely good-looking,” he said. “Why should God make me handsome and rich and be in front of all the temptations in the world? You know, they said in the Bible it’s more difficult for a rich man to enter Paradise than for a camel to enter in the hole of a needle. Well, why does he discriminate against me?” Still, God has come through for him. He allowed Sharif, who smoked a hundred cigarettes a day for forty years, to live through the night once when he had chest pains (he was in Budapest, filming an Angela Lansbury movie, “Mrs. ’Arris Goes to Paris”), and so he quit smoking altogether. “I never spoke to him again,” he said. “Because I thought, I’m not going to break his balls every minute, asking him for a favor—‘Make my horse win the third race at Yonkers.’ I said, ‘I’ve got something there. I’ll save it till I really need something big.’”

Sharif took a sip of wine. “Ecstasy,” he said. “I believe that I will go to Paradise, if it exists. I never lie, I never kill, I never do anything really bad. I am very charitable. I spread my money everywhere, I throw it like this—when I have it.” His next role will be in a movie of the epic Gilgamesh, in which he plays the richest man in town.

Proust Questionnaire

Vanity Fair, December 2003

Omar Sharif appeared in two of the 20th century's landmark films, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. He is also the only man in history to have played both Genghis Khan and Che Guevara. With starring roles in two new movies -- this month's Monsieur Ibrahim and the upcoming Hidalgo -- the 71-year-old actor and champion bridge player pauses to reflect on intolerance, Gandhi, and gambling.

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Not desiring what I don't have.

What is your greatest fear? Dependence on anybody else.

Which historical figure do you most identify with? Gandhi.

Which living person to you most admire? Marlon Brando.

What is the trait you most deplore in others? Intolerance.

What is your greatest extravagance? Gambling.

What is your favorite journey? Up the Nile to Aswân.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Working hard.

On what occasion do you lie? Since my divorce, I never lie.

What do you dislike most about your appearance? My paunch.

What or who is the greatest love of your life? My son.

Which talent would you most like to have? Acting.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be? My family is perfect.

If your were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be? A camera.

If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be? A champion racehorse.

What is your most treasured possession? The complete works of Shakespeare.

Where would you like to live? Paris.

What is your most marked characteristic? A quick wit.

Who are your favorite writers? Proust and Agatha Christie.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Ulysses.

Who are your heroes in real life? All people who are against killing others.

What are your favorite names? Omar and Zuleika.

What is it that you most dislike? Discussions about God.

How would you like to die? In my sleep.

What is your motto? "Love thy neighbor."

November 30, 2003

Omar Sharif Rides Again, Very Gently

By SARAH LYALL, New York Times

ARIS

Omar Sharif is not one to glorify his own past. "Most films I made were very bad," he said.

"About four years ago, I stopped acting," he continued. "I was turning down the same rubbish I had been doing for 25 years, because I decided that I wanted to keep some dignity in my old age. It's not easy to find foreigners' parts in good films. You find them in these terrible films — `Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves'; `The Thief of Baghdad' — that sort of thing."

Mr. Sharif laughed, a throaty, chuckling laugh. It was late in the afternoon and he had just descended from the suite he inhabits at the fancy Hotel Royal Monceau, near the Champs-Élysées. Drinking coffee at the bar, as he does every afternoon after a marathon soak with the newspapers in his bath upstairs, he was trying as hard as he could to convey the impression that he was a grumpy old man. "I am getting irascible," he warned.

At 71, he is indeed a changed figure from the man whose magnificent entrance from the swirling mists, swathed in black robes and exuding exotic appeal, stirred so many hearts in "Lawrence of Arabia." But his regal bearing has remained, along with his big gap-toothed smile and his intense, glittering eyes. His hair is gray but full and thick, and he exudes old-fashioned, courtly charisma.

Even though his retirement from movies was a brief one — his latest film, "Monsieur Ibrahim," opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles — Mr. Sharif claims to have renounced most of his favorite activities. "What I'm trying to do now is give up all forms of passion, except if I've got good parts to act," he said.

That means this famous gambler no longer goes to casinos, after an incident earlier this year in which he swore at a croupier, head-butted a police officer ("in plain clothes, though he had shown me his badge," he said) and received a month's suspended sentence. ("I wasn't drinking, unfortunately; then I could at least have said I was drunk," Mr. Sharif added.) A renowned international bridge player and syndicated columnist, Mr. Sharif no longer plays competitive bridge because, he said, "I didn't want to end up as a mediocre old bridge player."

No more women, either. "I'm a sentimental person and I don't go for sleeping around," he said. "It never really interested me. I have done some of it, of course. Sometimes you get into a situation where you can't get out of it."

By the same token, marrying again, or even living with someone, has been out of the question since Mr. Sharif split up with his wife, the Egyptian actress Faten Hamama, nearly four decades ago. "When you live alone for a while, then you can't stand to live with somebody else," he said. "Now it would bother me to wake up and have someone chatting away, or having to wait to go into the bathroom." He paused. "Of course, one could have lots of bathrooms."

Set in Paris in the early 1960's, "Monsieur Ibrahim" is a gentle tale about a lost and lonely Jewish boy (Pierre Boulanger) and the elderly Muslim shopkeeper, played by Mr. Sharif, who becomes his friend, rescuer and philosophical guide. It was warmly received at this year's Venice Film Festival, where Mr. Sharif was given a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement and a standing ovation from an adoring crowd.

"It's a little movie, a fable," said Mr. Sharif. "In these times, when we're living with conflicts all over the place, I thought it would be nice to make a small picture with tolerance in it and to say that we can live together and love each other, no matter what race or religion we are."

He was attracted to the film, directed by François Dupeyron, because he admired the script (by Mr. Dupeyron and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt) and because he was intrigued by the role of Ibrahim, who blossoms along with his relationship with the youth. "It's as if he exists only for this child," Mr. Sharif said. "He could be an angel sent by God to make this boy happy."

Mr. Sharif, who has acted in dozens of films, ranging from "Dr. Zhivago" to "The Mysterious Island of Captain Nemo," says, "I'm the only actor in the world who is foreign in every country I work in." Born in Alexandria, Egypt, he spoke Arabic and French at home, went to an English boarding school in Cairo, and somehow picked up Italian, French and Spanish. For years he was one of the world's most recognized movie stars, enjoying affairs and flirtations with leading ladies like Barbra Streisand, his co-star in "Funny Girl."

He lived large, earning huge sums and sometimes gambling away hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. "I have a very strange relationship with money," he said. "I don't mind not having any. But when I have money in the bank, I cannot stand not spending it."

He is close to his son, a 46-year-old clothing manufacturer who lives in Cairo, and to his two grandsons. He lives most of the time in Paris, staying free at the hotel courtesy of the owner, an old friend, and spending most evenings at restaurants, or at the theater or the opera. He likes to go out for long, argument-filled dinners with his friends. "We discuss the performances and the conductor, and I go nuts if they contradict me," he said, chuckling. "Contrary to what people think, that when you get old, you get wise and patient — it's the opposite. You are very impatient, because you have no time to be patient."

Mr. Sharif stays up late into the night and gets up well past lunchtime each day. Conscious of his health after bypass surgery several years ago, he walks for an hour after rising, returns to his room for his long bath, and does not appear in the hotel bar for his coffee until late each afternoon. He does not drink much alcohol — another thing he has given up.

This spring, Mr. Sharif is to appear with Viggo Mortensen in "Hidalgo," an adventure film about an epic 19th-century horse race in which he plays an Arab prince ("It's a different sheik, and it doesn't remind me at all of the other," he said, referring to his character in "Lawrence of Arabia"). He is also to begin work with his old friend and "Lawrence" co-star, Peter O'Toole, on a new film based on the Gilgamesh epic. "We're playing the old guys," he said.

An agnostic since he renounced Catholicism as teenager, Mr. Sharif says that he agrees with his character in "Monsieur Ibrahim," whose last lesson is that in dying, one rejoins what he calls "the immensity."

"Regret is something that should be taken out of the dictionary," Mr. Sharif said. "It's the most illogical feeling in the world. How can I regret the circumstances of when I was 28 and made an idiotic film or whatever it is — I had a toothache or I had a headache — I don't remember what happened that particular day. It would be like somebody regretting something that somebody else did."

He continued: "My philosophy of life is that I'm living every moment intensely, as if it were the last moment. I don't think of what I did before or what I'm going to do. I think of what I'm doing right now.

"The worst thing — well, I don't know if it would be the worst thing, but one of the worst things — would be to die, and the last thing you did or the last evening you spent was the most boring of your life."

The Hot Button, David Poland, Nov. 12, 2003

Click here for original article

Sharif is starring in Monsieur Ibrahim & The Flowers Of The Koran, a Sony Classics pick-up that brought Sharif and Audience Award win at the Venice Film Festival. The film is charming, smart and definitively modest… much like Omar Sharif himself.

Omar Sharif is a guy you want to sit down to a three-hour dinner with. You can’t sit down to a two-hour lunch with him because he doesn’t eat lunch. Or breakfast. For as long as he seems to remember, he has been a one-meal man. Maybe a little coffee when he has to work, to maintain his energy. But he likes to wake up late, “so it’s close to dinner,” do some work in the afternoon, have dinner around 8pm and then watch movies into the wee hours. He watches old movies almost exclusively. He says that he only goes to see one movie a year in a theater. He researches carefully, so he is never disappointed. But at home, he watches the old black & whites.

A self-described “old Arab,” Sharif hangs much of his life on luck. His work with Lean was incredibly lucky. Because of that success, he was given a wide range of roles to play, from a Mongol leader to Russian hero to a German officer. Then things got less lucky. He worked with great directors; Anthony Mann, Fred Zinnemann, Sidney Lumet, John Frankenheimer, Blake Lester and Richard Lester… and as he says, made the worst movie of each of their careers.

There was another unpleasant hitch. As great and successful as Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago were, Omar Sharif was under contract and made just $20,000 a movie for his most successful films. When it came time to cash in, Sharif was looking for paydays, like Che! What’s the worst role he ever had? “Any role with a bad character and a bad director is the worst movie,” he says. And I thought the answer would be one of the back-to-back hits, Oh, Heavenly Dog! and Green Ice.

Sharif decided to take a break from acting in the 90s. He came back now and again, but mostly to pay the bills. His memory of making the John McTiernan film that was eventually released as The 13th Warrior was pleasant. “I wasn’t in it very much.” He liked his character. He liked McTiernan. He’s never seen the resulting movie. But he seems to like Antonio Banderas a lot. And he worries for the man. “They will trap him with that accent… and you can never lose that Spanish accent.”

He plays “old Arabs” in both Monsieur Ibrahim and the upcoming Hildago, which stars Viggo Mortensen. The thought of it makes him laugh and smile. But Monsieur Ibrahim is really his movie. It is a character of some subtlety and charm that we rarely see our one-time-sex-gods get to play. Sharif deflects any Oscar chances, brushing them quickly aside. “I don’t have that moment… the moment you need to win awards.” But many others feel differently. And when the Academy looks around for a familiar face to hold to its bosom, don’t be surprised if the face belongs to the bridge world’s favorite movie star.

Omar Sharif: AFI Fest Tribute 2003

Variety, November 2, 2003

"The good news is that I'm not being honored posthumously," says Omar Sharif, who stars in "Monsieur Ibrahim" and "Hidalgo." "It's my 50th year of being in the film business, and so I think they're just saying 'bravo' for surviving. Also it might have some political significance. For America to say 'Get a grip, we have nothing against Arabs.' Nobody told me that, but I imagine it's a little bit about that."

LEGENDS OF HOLLYWOOD

A long time in the desert

Omar Sharif has made many "trashy, idiotic films," but he hopes "Monsieur Ibrahim" will restore his luster.

By David Gritten, Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2003

Omar SHARIF has been a screen actor for 50 years. Yet he is not one to mouth platitudes about this remarkable career achievement, which encompasses some 90 movies. In fact, few actors are more candid about their body of work. "I went 25 years without making a good film," he insists; on thinking back, he concludes it's nearer 30.

Strolling elegantly through a hotel lobby here, he virtually stops conversation; guests sipping drinks do sudden double-takes, pointedly nudging one another and gesturing toward him with their eyes. At 71, Sharif retains all his considerable presence.

That mane of jet-black hair is steel-gray now and swept back from his brow. He wears round spectacles and a week's growth of thick stubble. Yet this is recognizably the man who was one of the big screen's leading heartthrobs, especially when he breaks into his trademark gap-toothed smile.

"The fans who come up and talk to me these days are either older people with fond memories or young people whose grandmothers or mothers love me," he reflects. "That's moving. It's good to be remembered."

He'll be remembered next week in Los Angeles with a tribute at AFI Fest 2003, where the audience will get to see him in a small, well-regarded French film, "Monsieur Ibrahim." But even without these reminders, Sharif retains his hold on film fans. How could he not? In the 1960s, Egyptian-born Sharif was in three unforgettable starring roles: as T.E. Lawrence's friend, the Bedouin prince Sherif Ali, in David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia"; as the charismatic Russian poet-doctor wooing Julie Christie's Lara in the title role of "Doctor Zhivago"; and as the wayward, irresistibly attractive cad Nicky Arnstein, breaking Barbra Streisand's heart in "Funny Girl."

Women went weak-kneed at the sight of him; soon after "Doctor Zhivago" opened, he reportedly received 3,000 proposals of marriage. Critic Pauline Kael memorably called him "a walking love scene." Back then, Sharif was tagged the most famous Egyptian since Cleopatra. "It's true when people recognize me these days, those three films are the ones they talk about," he concedes. "But it doesn't bother me. It's better than having done none they remember. I find it endearing."

He admits his subsequent movies never matched the splendor of those three hits. This was partly bad luck: "What killed my career was appearing in a succession of films you wouldn't turn down," he recalls ruefully. "They were by good directors, but they were bad films." He reels some of them off: Fred Zinnemann's "Behold a Pale Horse," John Frankenheimer's "The Horsemen," Sidney Lumet's "The Appointment."

It didn't help that in those less enlightened days, the exotic Sharif was too often cast as an all-purpose foreigner. He was a Yugoslav in "The Yellow Rolls-Royce," a Mexican in "McKenna's Gold," an Austrian in "Mayerling," a Greek in "The Break-in" and a German in "The Last Valley" and "The Night of the Generals." (In the latter film, his hair was streaked blond.) But Sharif concedes he also signed up for several films that even in advance looked rotten. "It was partly my fault," he says, sighing. "I lost money on gambling, buying horses, things like that. So I made those movies which I knew were rubbish."

Gambling and romance

Craps and roulette have long exerted a dangerous fascination for him. In 1975, he was forced to sell his lavish bachelor pad in Paris to pay gambling debts. Tales of his extravagance abound. On one day in Deauville, he lost the equivalent of $200,000 on horses and cards. "That's why I was in so many trashy, idiotic films," he says wearily. "I'd call my agent and tell him to accept any part, just to bail myself out."

He always liked cards, even if money was not involved. Early on, he was so bored between scenes on film sets that he taught himself bridge, gradually improving to become one of the world's best players. "My form of gambling now is owning horses," he muses. "I have shares in 10, and I own two outright. They race, they don't win much, but the young ones keep coming through. There's hope eternal when you own horses."

Romance was his other Achilles' heel. Sharif was no stranger to women, and in his younger days he often became entangled with his leading ladies. But none came to anything. Instead he slipped into the role of international playboy and jet-setter, never establishing roots. "I had no base," he reflects. "Contrary to all other actors in the world, I was the only foreigner in every single cinema industry — French, Italian, English or American. I was the outsider." He moved nomadically from one film set to another, trading on his exotic good looks and deep reserves of charm.

Both have stayed with him. At the Venice Film festival this year, he received a Golden Lion award for his career. On Nov. 11 at the ArcLight Cinemas, Sharif will receive the AFI Fest Tribute for his career's work, followed Nov. 12-13 by a retrospective of four of his films at the Skirball Cultural Center.

"I'm being given all these nonposthumous honors because it's my 50th year in film," he says dryly. "Best to receive them before you die, I think."

A general name change

He was born Michael Chalhoub in Alexandria. Raised a Catholic, he came from a high-born family; his father was a rich timber merchant and his mother a friend of Egypt's King Farouk (with whom, tellingly, she often played cards). At 21, he married actress Fatem Hamama, became a Muslim and changed his name to Omar Sharif, which he felt would be easier for the Western world to pronounce. (Omar was after Gen. Omar Bradley; "Sharif," he thought, sounded like "sheriff.")

That same year he became a star in Egypt, being plucked from obscurity to play the lead in a drama, "The Blazing Sun." He had made a dozen more films in Cairo by 1960, when American producer Sam Spiegel sought him for the role in "Lawrence of Arabia" that would change his life. Originally a light-eyed actor was signed to play Sherif Ali, and director David Lean realized his mistake.

Sharif, who had no lawyer or agent, signed a seven-year contract with Columbia for $50,000 a film, up to and including "Funny Girl." It seemed a lot of money but was far below the rate for American or British stars. "It was a terrible deal," he says now.

But nothing lessened his impact; he literally rode to global stardom on a camel. Ali is first seen in "Lawrence" as a tiny dot on a desert horizon that shimmers in the heat; he gradually becomes more distinct as he nears the camera. It's among the longest, most suspenseful shots in film history.

He and Fatem had a son, Tarek, but divorced in 1968, when Sharif moved to Paris. He loved the city's food and wine but never found another woman he wanted to live with.

He is still based there, though in a different style from his younger days: "I live in a hotel. I've lived alone for ages. Hotels are quite nice when you get older. When you need company you go down to the bar. Lots of the customers know me. I've got a place at the bar, my stool. And if you feel bad in the night you can always call the concierge and say, 'Send an ambulance.' " He chuckles grimly. "If you're alone in a flat, you can feel scared at night."

This last point is not a trivial one: Sharif underwent a heart bypass operation in 1993. Yet typically he found something positive in the experience. Egyptian cardiac surgeon professor Sir Magdi Yacoub, who operated on him at Britain's Harefield Hospital, became a close friend. Yacoub is founder patron of Chain of Hope, a charity that helps medical volunteers to travel worldwide, treat children born with heart defects and train local doctors to assist their recovery.

These days he seems happiest playing the family patriarch. His son, Tarek, is 46, and Sharif has two grandsons: Omar, 20, a university student in Canada, and Karem, 4, who lives in Egypt with his parents. He worries incessantly that his son and grandchildren are financially secure: "That's another reason I didn't make a good movie for 25 years."

Until now, that is. He is proud of his title role in the new French film "Monsieur Ibrahim." He plays a kindly old Muslim grocer living in Paris who befriends a sad Jewish teenage boy with uncaring, neglectful parents; they travel together to the old man's Turkish homeland. With a release scheduled for early next year in the U.S., "Monsieur Ibrahim," directed by Francois Dupeyron, is being heralded as a comeback for Sharif.

"It's beautifully written," he says, "and it has nice big chunks of dialogue, which is what I like to do, rather than riding horses or camels. I'd turned down everything and stopped working for four years. I said, 'I'm going to stop doing that rubbish and keep some dignity.' But when I read the script for 'Monsieur Ibrahim,' I phoned the producers immediately. I said, 'Hang on, I'm coming, wait for me.'

"My problem is finding parts. When you're young and successful, they write or adapt parts for you. But when you're an old chap, let's be frank, you don't sell tickets anymore. If they need an old Englishman, American or Italian, there are plenty of actors around. So what's open for me? Old Arabs. And that's what I play in this film."

Curse of the ageing playboy

Glenys Roberts,

Sunday Mail (Queensland, Australia), October 26, 2003

For decades actor Omar Sharif enjoyed the high life, seducing hundreds of women and touring the world's casinos, but these days, as GLENYS ROBERTS discovers, he's just a bitter, bad-tempered old man
Omar Sharif is telling me the story of the night he lost his temper in a casino near Paris recently and landed in jail. He was playing roulette and decided to bet pound stg. 20,000 ($A48,000) on a single number. It didn't come up. He lost the lot.
"I must have lost about pound stg. 200,000 ($A480,000) that night," he says. "And then I lost my temper. I probably swore at the croupier.
"The next thing I know I'm surrounded by four men who start frogmarching me out. So I did what anyone in the same situation would do: I turned round to one of these men holding on to me and head-butted him.
"Unfortunately he turned out to be a plainclothes policeman, not a bouncer.
"The next thing I know I am being arrested. I had to spend a night in jail."
For this misdemeanour, the Egyptian actor who won a legion of female fans worldwide when he loomed out of the desert on a camel to meet Peter O'Toole in Lawrence Of Arabia, has just been given a one-month suspended sentence by a French magistrate.
Sharif, with his famous liquid eyes and gap-toothed smile, went on to make another legendary Sixties film, Dr Zhivago. He was then catapulted to Hollywood where many a girl, including Barbra Streisand, succumbed to his exotic charms.
He also established himself as an international playboy and renowned bridge player, as well as a world-class gambler.
Today Sharif, who turned 71 this year, says he has given it all up -- sex, bridge, even gambling since his encounter with the law.
And although, as he reveals, he is set to star in a new film with Peter O'Toole, also 71, he seems keen to paint a picture of a life with very few excitements.
A small man with several days' growth of grey stubble, his once jet-black hair now completely grey and those luminous eyes masked by wire-framed spectacles, he lives free in a Paris hotel, courtesy of its owner, having had to sell most of his property because of gambling debts.
So why, after all his losses, was he still drawn back to the gaming tables?
"I had a bit of money, so I went to the tables. It could happen to anyone," he says defiantly.
"Anyway, I'm not going to gamble any more."
In the past Sharif has said that gambling was a substitute for sex -- an activity which he now also tells me he has given up entirely.
"Who can tell when it happened?" he says bad-temperedly. "It creeps up on you. The andropause is not like a woman's menopause, when she has physical proof that something has changed for her. If you are a man it happens slowly."
The thought fills him with gloom and irascibility. "It's not that I can't do it. I don't want to do it. If I did, I would. I like being alone. I haven't lived with a woman since 1968."
The woman was Faten Hamama, Egypt's leading actress, whom he married at the age of 21. They were divorced after 15 years. She is now wedded to a businessman but Sharif never married again.
He still keeps in touch with her and their son, Tarek, and little grandson, but it depresses him that the boy knows nothing of his grandfather's once flamboyant career.
In fact, most things seem to depress him. He says he gets up late to have as few hours to fill as possible.
Brunch, taken when most people are ordering their first cocktail, consists of a cup of decaffeinated coffee and a bottle of mineral water.
He moves swiftly on to dinner, consuming one glass of whisky followed by three courses and a bottle of red wine.
"I drink it all alone. It has no effect on me," he snaps.
Sharif is not coping well with growing old. In truth, he has still not got over the death of his mother several years ago.
An indulgent woman who taught him to gamble, she was, he says, the architect of everything he has ever done.
It was she who sent him, as a small, fat, 10-year-old boy, to an English-style boarding school in Cairo, where he ate nothing but brussels sprouts and cabbage, and became thin.
"If she hadn't done that, I would never have been cast in Lawrence and nothing would ever have happened to me."
Sharif arrived in Hollywood in 1962 -- the year, he says, when women had begun to burn their bras and discos had just been invented.
"I was in a state of cultural shock. I was 29, just a boy from Cairo. Even though I was a married man, I knew nothing."
He quickly made up for lost time, soon developing a reputation for loving and leaving almost any girl he met. According to many, he was a heartless seducer.
But without women, what dictates his life today? He says that he devotes himself to intellectual pursuits. A good linguist, he decided several months ago that he would like to learn Ancient Greek.
"It amused me to do something entirely useless before I die," he says. "If I mastered it I thought I would be able to read Homer in the original.
"How far have I got with my lessons? I can say 'I love you', but what good is it?" The old seducer is desperate to portray himself as a curmudgeon with one foot in the grave. His needs are simple, he maintains, and are all catered for by the attentive hotel staff.
"I like living in a hotel. If I am bored I can come down and chat with the waiters. Everyone here knows my tastes and if something happens to me late at night, they know how to call the doctor."
Ten years ago he had a heart bypass.
He still keeps in touch with the surgeon who performed the operation, fellow Egyptian Sir Magdi Yacoub, and last week he was briefly in London to attend a fund-raising dinner for the surgeon's Chain of Hope charity. But though he works hard to persuade me that the days of fun and glamour are far behind him, his career is in better shape today than for years.
He is about to be honoured with an American lifetime achievement award and his latest film, Monsieur Ibrahim, was well received at the Venice Film Festival. Yet, it is as if he rejoices in his gloomy outlook.
"What does anything matter?" he asks. "Don't try to tell me there is a future for me. I am fed up with making bad films. I don't fit in anywhere. There are lots of parts for old Americans, but no one wants an old Arab."
Ah, but they do. For Sharif and O'Toole are to be reunited after 40 years in their first joint film since Lawrence Of Arabia. The movie, based on the story of the Persian king Gilgamesh, will start shooting in Morocco in February.
For a moment he forgets his bad temper. He suddenly remembers an invitation to accompany the glamorous Betty Lagardere, grieving widow of the head of the French Jockey Club, to the races.
The thought has him making renewed plans to buy a racehorse as well as place a bet. Thoughts of giving up gambling have gone.
Suddenly he seizes my hand and lavishly kisses it.
Horseflesh, gambling and women. Omar Sharif will never really change.

A modest actor at the time of the Venice Film Festival, Omar Sharif received a Golden Lion for his lifetime career. His reaction to such a distinction is very modest. "It gives me pleasure, it is an honor but these are the things that one receives because one survived a certain number of years. I am in my 50th year in the movies, I started in 1953. I believe that they know it. The American Movie Institute is going to honor me also in November for ifetime achievement. But it is also because that makes 50 years that I make movies and that I didn't die", he points out with a lot of humor. The role that has most marked the public is Doctor Zhivago because this movie had an enormous success, but I made a lot of very bad movies. But in these movies, I always find that there is a good half minute. I don't manage to judge the movies as a total entity. Personally, in Doctor Zhivago, I am not very good. Lawrence of Arabia is for him by far his best movie, but not his best acting.
"Lawrence of Arabia was my first movie. It is a very beautiful movie that will remain in the history of the movies. And, finally, I played an Arab, what I was. As I was the only Arab, I was nominated for the Oscar. Alec Guiness and Anthony Queen also played some Arabs. It is out of the question to say that I was a better actor than they! The reason I was nominated was that I was a real Arab. It is not necessary to take a true Arab ever when the rest of the actors is made up of Arabs." ("Il ne faut jamais prendre un vrai Arabe quand le reste des acteurs sont maquillés en Arabes.")

-- Excerpt from The Express in Toronto discussion with Omar Sharif by Laurence Dupin -- Week of Sept. 16, 2003

Omar Sharif is Monsieur Ibrahim in the latest film of François Dupeyron (roughly translated from French)

The Express, September 11, 2003

It took more than twenty years and an Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt novel, Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran, finely adapted to the screen by François Dupeyron, for Omar Sharif, 71 years old, to find a role worthy of his talent. The role of Ibrahim, therefore, grocer «philoriental» who adopts a young Jew took him back to the turmoil of the 1960's. Too happy to have anything else to say except: «The horses, this is my big passion», the star of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhiivago (1962 and 1965), returned from Venice, where a tribute was paid to him, and was welcomed at the Royal Monceau, where he has chosen to live.

Four years ago, you said you no longer wanted to make movies. How did Dupeyron convince you to change your mind?

He did not have to convince me. I was delighted to find a role of an old Arab that was very well written. I would even have been offended if a French actor were cast.

Were you afraid of disappointing your Egyptian fans, that appreciate you more in roles of dashing heroes?

My fear was elsewhere, with respect to the Islamic fundamentalists who could have been irritated because of certain dialogue or reaction to my character. For example, when he says: «I know this that is in my Koran», it is dangerous. In the Muslim religion, the Koran does not belong to a person, this is the word of God. But, to the Coming Mostra, the Egyptian press has reacted very well. It is a good sign.

Does this film reconcile you with cinema?

I never was upset with cinema. It was cinema that was fâché with me. Not easy to find roles for a foreigner! Then I turned only conneries. When one is young, a star, and attracts the public, they adapt the characters for you. But, at my age, only supporting parts are offered to you. Or, when the role was important, the film was stupid. And it is painful to pass three months saying dialogue with idiots directed by an ass. An actor who wins the Oscar does not deserve the admiration: his role is necessarily within reach of any major actor, because it was well written and realized. While portraying a bad character in a bad film, that is difficult. I preferred to stop, even just in order not to disappoint my grandchildren.

You also have maybe less financial needs than before?

No, for I do not have any money set aside. I never had any. In Hollywood, I was under contract to Columbia: 20,000 dollars per film. This was not enormous. But I can live simply. What I cannot do is to have money and not spend it. All my life, I was behind a film on my debts.

This does not prevent you from living at the Royal Monceau...

You are mistaken: I have a suite free of charge, offered by the owner, a Syrian who loves me. I only pay for the extras - room service , steam pressing, etc. - this costs me 3,000 Euros a week nonetheless. If I do not own an apartment, this is because I have lived alone since 1968. I do not want to be depressed, isolated from all.

Un comédien qui a l'oscar ne mérite pas qu'on l'admire: son rôle était forcément à la portée de n'importe quel grand acteur, parce que c'était bien écrit et réalisé. Alors que défendre un mauvais personnage dans un mauvais film, ça, c'est difficile. J'ai préféré arrêter, ne serait-ce que pour ne pas décevoir mes petits-enfants.

The flowers of Omar

Marco Spagnoli

Cinema.supereva.It, August 30, 2003

Click here for original article in Italian

In perfect Italian (" a tongue that I did not study and that I learned because I love this country..."), con una simpatia immutata nel tempo, the fascinating Omar Sharif accepted the Golden Lion for his career. Born 71 years ago in Alexandria, Egypt to a well-to-do Lebanese-Egyptian family, he became Muslim when he married the actress Faten Hamama, from whom he later divorced in 1974. Omar Sharif was introduced in 1953 by Youssef Chanine in the film Siraa Fil-Wadi and became a star of the Egyptian cinema. He was then rediscovered by David Lean who offered him the role of Ali ibn el Kharish in the film Lawrence of Arabia, that marked the beginning of his international career. And he was the unforgettable Yuri Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago produced in 1965 by Carlo Ponti.

What do you think of your character in Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran?

Sincerely I find him very beautiful. In the beginning we have a lonely and dark boy and an old man that says important things, but which are also very simple. Then we discover that he is a lonely man who has never spoken with anyone and who wanted to interact with his only friend: a teen-ager. In my life I have had four sons who are all almost perfect... today I understand clearly the father-son relationship to portray on screen.

What it is the secret of being a good father?

To play with his children as if he himself is a child. Once such a relation of love and fun is established, the discipline comes naturally. Above all fathers today do not play anymore with their children.

The script pleased you?

Very much. I had taken it with me to read on the airplane to Egypt and I was so pleased with it that when we landed I called the producer to say I would accept the role.

Do you consider this film a comedy about the relations between Arabs and Jews?

No, it is not about that, because nothing would have been changed if the child were not Jewish. The fact that he is, however, adds something in degree to explain what tolerance is.

Of the many actresses with whom you have worked worked, whom do you remember with the most pleasure?

I cannot answer, because if you asked the same question of one of them and she did not cite my name, I would be forced to kill her.

With whom have you felt more emotion?

Surely with Ingrid Bergman, because she had been a dream of my youth. When I was working with her I was excited like a child. I had many good times with Barbra Streisand in Funny girl because I had never seen a woman perform so before her.

Sofia Loren?

Every evening after filming, Sophia and I loved eating pasta. Therefore I found her enjoyable.

And is it true that you live in a hotel in Paris?

Yes, because I hate to be at home. I love to go out and I love reading. If I feel lonely I come down to the bar of the hotel. I prefer to coexist with the cook and the waiters. So after my divorce I moved to a hotel. I live in a hotel next to the Arc de Triomphe on Avenue Poche.

What is your relationship with money?

I can live without it, but I like to earn it and above all to spend it. It is impossible for me to hold too much money for too long. I have to spend it.

What are your favorite films?

Those in white and black of the forties. They are my favorites: those of my youth with impossible actors like Tyrone Power and Robert Taylor, attractive, but incapable of acting. Today in the cinema beauty does not count anymore and the stars are common persons that you can almost meet on the street. Beautiful, but a modern beauty.

What is your relationship with American cinema?

Years ago I lived for three years in America and I said: "Ma chi me lo fa fare? I need the beauty" and I returned to Europe. Every so often I do a film for them, and it is fine this way. I never loved Hollywood very much, because when I wasn’t working, I did not know where to go. If you take the airplane you end up in Texas after three hours. Here you end up in Venice, London, Madrid... amidst beauty.

What do you think of the great success of the DVD releases of your films like Lawrence of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago?

In some way it has gained new young fans... they are films that will live. Lawrence of Arabia will live longer than Doctor Zhivago which in my opinion is a little too sentimental. The film very much resembles Gone with the Wind, because both are films of love set against the background of a civil war. Films meant to make you cry... when I was very young, in Egypt, the success of a film was measured by how much the public cried.

And do you like to cry at the cinema?

Yes and I do continuously. Not only at the cinema. I love being moved by art, but it happens to me also when I am confronted with the tragedies that I see on television, like the genocide in Rwanda, the war in Iraq and what happens in Israel every day.

The unforgettable prince of "Lawrence of Arabia" returns to the set
and goes to Venice with a film to launch an appeal for peace
Zhivago is 70 years old and says
"I am Arabic, Catholic, Jew"
Omar Sharif: "I am not communist, but the world of Bush and Berlusconi scares me."
from our correspondent PIOUS MARIA FUSCO, August 4, 2003

Click here for original article in Italian

DEAUVILLE – The appointment is in the afternoon at the Royal, an old hotel on the ocean furnished with ancient and subtle elegance, in line with those who choose to vacation in Normandy. Omar Sharif enters the semi-deserted bar, unmistakable with the bleached grey mustache and hair, a fine gentleman with glasses, distinguished and relaxed, like a retired professor. He removes his glasses, smiles and in the bright and intense look there is still the boldness of the prince of the desert of Lawrence of Arabia, the melancholy passion of Doctor Zhivago.

But there is also the quiet sweetness of a seventy-year-old (71 years old in April) that preserves the manners of a gentleman of other times, diligent in pouring the tea, lighting the cigarette even if he does not smoke. He says: "I have been coming here every summer for forty years, the climate pleases me, there’s the casino, there are the horse races", and talks about the "family reunion we do every August, with my son, grandsons, other relatives scattered throughout Europe".

But the reason for this meeting is the star’s unexpected return to the cinema with his new film being shown outside competition in Venice, Monsieur Ibrahim and the flowers of the Corano, from the story by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, directed by François Dupeyron, distributed in Italy by Lucky Red. "After The Thirteenth Warrior with Banderas I had said enough with the nonsense that I do just because I am well paid. But I knew the work of Schmitt like theatrical monolog, and when I read the script I was moved and I wanted to be us".

Who is Monsieur Ibrahim?
"An old Arabic shopkeeper that develops a friendship with Momo, an abandoned Jewish boy all alone. A kind of wise man who says philosophical things, simple and of common sense, but to Momo, to whom no one has ever spoken, they are precious daily teachings that help him to live, make him discover the smile and relationships with others. In a difficult moment, with the world upset by intolerance, I thought that with my old popularity I could give a small example of coexistence. That is also in my life".

Is it somewhat autobiographical?
"While I lived in the Paris of the film, near the Rue Bleue that is not completely dark blue, there is a Jewish district where there is a grocery store belonging to an old Arab, in food the Jewish and Muslims have quite a lot in common. I am the son of observant Catholics, educated in Catholic schools, and became Muslim when I married, my son has two sons, a Jew and a Muslim one. But I want to clarify that the film is not about religion or politics, it’s a film about love, a meeting of two human beings that learn to communicate, and it is a film that transcends time, that is set in the sixties but applies to today or tomorrow".

Where is Omar Sharif the great connoisseur, who loses his fortunes to the Casino or lives at the bridge table in a cloud of smoke?
" All ended. I am no longer confident that I can earn enough to pay my debts. I was always a film behind, like Vittorio Sica says, the earnings of every film was used to pay previous debts. I also quit bridge, there was a time when if I had to choose between a tournament and a good film I chose the tournament, I threw away many opportunites. And with age the capacity for concentration decreases, it is difficult for a bridge champion after you pass 40, 50 years. I a