Many years ago (well, forty two, if you must know), Omar Sharif made a pact with Peter O'Toole that they would never, ever return to Morocco. The two friends had just finished shooting the film that would make them both famous, Lawrence Of Arabia, but the international playboys had a hellish time in the far from glamorous desert.

"You must realise, back in 1962, there wasn't one hotel there," sighs the legendary actor, who turns 72 this Saturday. "We had to live in tents. And there was nothing there, nothing – it was just desert. We very nearly went mad."

And yet, Omar has just returned from Morocco, where he shot his latest film, Hidalgo, alongside Viggo Mortensen. What changed his mind?

"The script changed my mind here," states Sharif flatly, but breaking the oath he made in 1962 had his old Irish friend doubled-over with laughter. "He died of laughter. But I'll give you some news; my next film will be with Peter O'Toole and we'll be shooting it out in Morocco. He made fun of me, but he's going to be there too. The truth is, of course, it's Hollywood out there now. You go there, and you find beautiful hotels, swimming pools, film studios, anything you want. It's a different world now."

Sharif lets out a cackle, something he does again and again during our interview. A very happy man, he's just picked up a César (a French Oscar) for his leading role in the comedy Monsieur Abrahim. Better still, Hidalgo marks his return to big-budget Hollywood studio making, having floundered in a netherworld of low-budget fluff interrupted by the odd worthy offering over the last two and a half decades, since 1965's Doctor Zhivago and 1968's Funny Girl.

"I was not getting a kick out of this for the last twenty five years because it was lousy," Sharif announces. "What I was doing was clearly very bad, because I couldn't find parts. Once you stop becoming a box-office star, they don't choose you except for what you really are. When I was a box-office star, they made me play Germans, Austrians, Russians, Italians, anything, but then, when you become old, if they need an old Italian, they cast an old Italian actor. And there are lots of good old Italian actors. As long as you're not really selling tickets anymore. But now, I'm confined to old Arabs, and usually, old Arabs are very bad, very poor, and so, this was the first one that I found that was very good, and I was very happy to do it."

That Hidalgo is an old-fashioned yarn moulded in the classic boy's own adventures of the 1940s and '50s suited Sharif, being, as he says himself, "very familiar with this world already". Anyone who thought that he was ready for retirement got a rude awakening last year though, when Sharif headbutting a policeman during a fracas at a French casino. "It was silly of me, but the man was very, very annoying," he quips. When he mentions that Arabs are often caricatures in films, I mention the Irish often suffer the same fate too.

"Yes, but they're fun caricatures," he smiles. "Many of the others, such as Arabs, Chinese, etc, are not." The Irish connection leads us to Sharif's old habit of treating himself to a thoroughbred racehorse in the old days whenever he finished a movie, and the fact that he used to keep some of them on a stud farm in Kildare.

"I used to breed my mares with a friend of mine," he says. "And, yes, I bred some decent animals there, not bad. Won me a few races, but nothing big. A racing horse is the purest of all horses. He's the most perfect, the most beautifully bred, if you like good breeding. So, if you love horses, you've got to love the racing horse."

Sharif's understated grace enlivens 'Ibrahim'
Ty Burr, Boston Globe, March 12, 2004

It's a good time to be Omar Sharif.

The Egyptian-born actor and thinking-woman's sex symbol of "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Funny Girl" has been away from the screen for far too long, content to be merely one of the world's leading authorities on the game of bridge. Yet here he is twice in two weeks, playing a canny, sympathetic desert sheik in the too-tall-tale horse-race epic "Hidalgo" -- my colleague Wesley Morris called it "Sandbiscuit," and I can't beat that -- and now in the title role of Francois Dupeyron's bittersweet coming-of-age saga "Monsieur Ibrahim."

Sharif won both a best actor Cesar (France's Oscar) and the audience award at the Venice Film Festival for "Ibrahim," and that's testament to the affection in which this treasure of the cinema is rightly held. It's certainly not for the movie, which is very nice and very familiar.

We're in early-'60s Paris -- "Woolly Bully" on the soundtrack -- in a back street called Rue Bleue, where the grizzled Ibrahim runs a flyspecked grocery store and where, across the way, a motherless Jewish boy named Momo (Pierre Boulanger) is trying to grow up as fast as possible. This includes breaking open his piggy bank so he can lose his virginity to one of the local streetwalkers, a development that Hollywood would spin an entire feature out of but which is dispatched in the first five minutes here. Hey, it's France.

Momo chafes under the law laid down by his humorless, book-obsessed father (Gilbert Melki), and his small rebellions include shoplifting sardines from the store across the street. He rationalizes this by telling himself he's only stealing from an Arab, but, as if reading his mind, Ibrahim responds that he's no Arab but an Anatolian Sufi from Turkey. And furthermore, "if you have to steal, I prefer you do it in my shop."

To paraphrase Bogart, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Spry, poetic, and given to the sort of twinkly folk wisdom found only in movies, Ibrahim mischievously assists Momo in his revolt against the patriachy -- a little cat food goes a long way when you're making dinner for Dad.

Then events take a somber turn, and the old soul is there to become a father figure in word and deed. Ultimately, Ibrahim leads Momo on a mind-expanding road trip through Europe to Istanbul, where the movie's best and least predictable moments unfold. By then, Momo has learned the joys of living for the moment, and Ibrahim has been forced by the script to spout such lines as "A man's heart is like a caged bird: When you dance, it sings and flies to heaven."

It takes skill to put over a wheezer like that and not have the audience firing Junior Mints at the screen. Maybe it's all the card playing, but Sharif never overplays his hand. Unshaven, gray, wearing a rumpled cardigan, the actor is far from the smoldering idol of bygone days, but he's fully at his ease, and he caresses the shopworn dialogue as if he'd come across it in the back of the store.

When Shirley MacLaine made this same movie, more or less, as "Madame Sousatzka," there was a whole lot of acting going on. Sharif brings us to Ibrahim with a modesty that oddly reminds you of why the actor is a legend.

An appealing breeze of the French New Wave blows through the film. As Momo, Boulanger has the guarded adolescent handsomeness of Jean-Pierre Leaud's Antoine Doinel in "The 400 Blows," and in one lovely sequence the Rue Bleue is enlivened by the crew of Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt" shooting on a side-street location. Brigitte Bardot, played in a blurry carnal cameo by Isabelle Adjani, even pops into Monsieur Ibrahim's store for a bottle of water.

"Water isn't rare, mademoiselle," the old man assures her. "True stars are."

Exactly so.

The return of Omar Sharif
AFTER DECADES OF LOUSY MOVIE PARTS, ONCE-HOT ACTOR FINDS ROLES MEATY ENOUGH TO BRING HIM OUT OF EXILE
Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News, March 4, 2004

Forty years ago, Omar Sharif was a very big deal. The Egyptian actor with the dark eyes and Valentino-like sex appeal appeared memorably opposite Peter O'Toole's Lawrence of Arabia and Barbra Streisand's Fanny Brice. He dined with studio moguls, boasted a Beverly Hills address and landed the much-coveted lead in David Lean's ``Dr. Zhivago.''

But then, in the late '60s, he did five back-to-back duds (including ``Che!'' and ``MacKenna's Gold'') and was consigned to what he now recalls as 30 years of ``terrible, horrible, ridiculous films. Not one decent film in 30 years! Or one decent part!''

At first content to just take the money and live the life of international bon vivant who lived in Paris and gambled in Monte Carlo, Sharif finally said, ``Enough!'' The turning point came when his grandchildren began making fun of his movies. ``So I decided not to do these things anymore, to wait until something good came up. And if nothing good came up, I decided I wouldn't work again.''

Sharif's self-imposed exile lasted five years -- until he received the script for ``Monsieur Ibrahim.'' The French import -- a coming-of-age story with a strong brotherhood message -- opens Friday throughout the Bay Area. Sharif, 71, plays the title character, a grizzled Muslim shopkeeper who tutors and eventually adopts an orphaned Jewish boy (Pierre Boulanger) in '60s Paris.

Coincidentally, the actor who couldn't find good work for so long also pops up Friday in Disney's ``Hidalgo,'' in which he plays ``an old Arab prince'' whose daughter takes a shine to star Viggo Mortensen.

Sharif may then segue into something called ``Cyber Meltdown,'' or an epic based on the Gilgamesh legend. The latter would reunite him with good friend O'Toole.

``I have beautiful dialogue in `Hidalgo' -- it's really the second part in the film,'' says Sharif, in San Francisco after receiving lifetime-achievement salutes from the Venice Film Festival and the American Film Institute. ``But it was the `Monsieur Ibrahim' script which brought me back. I thought it was time for me, a respected and loved person in the Middle East, to make this statement that it is possible for us to live together and love each other.''

Sharif, though the subject of tabloid accounts of public brawls (most recently for head-butting a casino security guard), is alarmed by the amount of hostility in the world. ``The rage of hatred is amazing,'' he says, stirring a cup of tea.

``The world has become a violent place, and the cinema reflects the world. I think this violence stems from the fact that making a living, feeding your belly, is getting to be more and more difficult. Everybody's in a struggle, a race with the other guy.''

The boy in ``Monsieur Ibrahim'' is initiated into sex by neighborhood prostitutes, who couldn't be more loving or romanticized. Such stereotypes don't bother Sharif. ``I had the same experience the boy has,'' he volunteers. ``My first sex was with a prostitute in Pigalle. I was 15, like the boy in the film. But I was not as bold as him. I was shaking.''

Today, Sharif identifies with the philosophical Ibrahim. He still likes to party and hold court -- he has a permanent stool in the lobby bar of the hotel where he lives -- but not to excess. A world-class bridge player and a legendary raconteur who has supped with Hollywood royalty as well as the real thing, he continues to be invited to all the best functions.

`I like people'

``I enjoy conversation -- I don't know how to lie,'' the actor says, typically exaggerating for effect. ``I like people. I was born in a country which has monuments and stones. I don't need to look at stones and monuments anymore. I need to know people and talk to them.

``I've always been very welcome in this country. Which is amazing because when I first came here I was an Egyptian from `Nasser-land,' and Nasser was a big enemy of the Jew.''

Even more amazing, he was cast as Jewish gambler Nicky Arnstein in William Wyler's ``Funny Girl,'' starring a then-25-year-old Streisand as Brice. ``I made `Funny Girl' during the Six Day War between Israel and Egypt -- with my Egyptian passport.''

Needless to say, ``Funny Girl'' didn't play in Sharif's homeland. Nor did ``Dr. Zhivago,'' because Egypt and Russia were allies and the movie was based on political dissident Boris Pasternak's novel.

Flashing back to his Hollywood contract days, Sharif smiles broadly and recalls, ``At first the idea of my playing Arnstein was a big joke. But then Wyler said, `Why not Sharif?' and everybody was stunned. . . . I had a ball on `Funny Girl.' It's probably the film I enjoyed making most. It was the first time I wore proper clothes, instead of Arab robes or running around in the snow.''

But it's the films for Lean -- ``Lawrence of Arabia'' and ``Dr. Zhivago'' -- that strangers ask about. ``Lean was a big influence on my life. I spent five years with him. Lean was a perfectionist, and I was a great admirer. I was like his son. . . . People ask, `Isn't it disappointing that you'll never top ``Lawrence,'' one of the great films of all time?' I respond, `It is better to do one good thing than to do nothing.' ''

Even in his 70s, Sharif is a presence to be reckoned with. It's hard to believe he can't find strong character parts. He would, for instance, make a great villain in a James Bond adventure.

``What character part? What nationality?'' he demands. ``It's got to be something Middle Eastern or Oriental. If they need an old American actor, they can get an old American actor. I'm not a box-office draw. Hiring me does not make people go to the cinema. I'm an addition to the stars, but I don't sell the picture.''

Sharif blames his under-utilization on his accent, which, because of his early education at French and English schools, has always been an indefinable amalgam.

`Foreign to every place'

``I am the only foreign actor in the world who is foreign to every place,'' he says with a laugh. ``When you're young and a box-office draw, they make concessions and cast you in the weirdest things. I played a German officer in `Night of the Generals.' I played Archduke Rudolph of Austria in `Mayerling.' I played Genghis Khan.''

And, of course, he played the morose but charismatic Sherif Ali in ``Lawrence of Arabia.'' His introduction -- as first a shimmering mirage, then a slowly growing figure on horseback -- qualifies as one of the greatest entrances in screen history.

``When they told me, `Come up and be tested in the desert,' I went. Remember, I was already a star. I had made 25 films in Egypt. I was married. I had a beautiful home. I had a child and was planning more.

``I often wonder if it was a good thing or bad thing that I made `Lawrence.' I wonder if my life would not have been happier had I stayed in Egypt. . . .''

At this, Sharif catches himself. Such ruminations run counter to his reputation as a vagabond-like citizen of the world.

``If I could obliterate the past, I wouldn't,'' he says. ``I think the word `regret' is stupid. At 71, do I regret decisions I made when I was 30, when I may have refused a film because I had a toothache? I was a different person under different circumstances. It's an absurd word -- this regret.''

Sharif bridges gap in acting career with new roles
Ian Spelling, Fort Worth Star Telegram, March 3, 2004

Omar Sharif's son Tarek married three times: first a Jewish woman, then a Catholic and finally a Muslim.

"And so I have a Jewish grandson, because his mother was Orthodox Jewish and Polish," Sharif says. "I gave him the biggest bar mitzvah anyone ever organized in Montreal. All the Polish Jews in the world came to the bar mitzvah.

"My other grandson is Muslim and lives in Egypt," he adds. "But my grandchildren are brothers, and they love each other."

Sharif smiles and his eyes twinkle with pride as he talks of his grandsons. And it's a timely topic, given that the 71-year-old actor is sitting in a New York hotel to promote his new film, the sweet-natured and much-praised coming-of-age drama Monsieur Ibrahim.

Though the French film's backers, publicists and, no doubt, Sharif himself were surely disappointed that the actor didn't receive an Oscar nomination, that in no way diminishes his performance. Sharif stars in Monsieur Ibrahim -- now in limited release -- as the title character, an elderly Muslim shopkeeper in Paris who befriends a Jewish teen-ager, Moises (Pierre Boulanger), whom he calls "Momo."

"I didn't do it for the money," Sharif says. "I didn't do it for any acclaim. I wasn't expecting anything that's happened with it. I did it for my own soul.

"I thought it was time for me to make a tiny statement about what I think of this whole situation in the Middle East, about all these people killing each other and all this bloodshed," he says firmly. "I saw it as an opportunity to say, 'We can get together. We can love each other.'

"I don't think the film will influence the world, but if it influences one person, that is enough."

He saw more in Monsieur Ibrahim than simply its message of brotherhood, Sharif says. He appreciated the relationship between the old man and the boy, the juxtaposition of the religions and cultures, and also the dialogue.

"The dialogue was beautifully written," he says. "In French it's just superb dialogue. I love when he says, 'What you give is yours forever. What you keep within you dies.' And it's true.

"This story, in a way, is a fable," the actor adds. "It touched me very much. As an old person with grandchildren, I'm very interested in my grandchildren and I'm very interested in kids. I play with my 4-year-old grandson and I play with him like mad -- I throw myself around and almost break my back, because I want to really play with him.

"So I enjoyed expressing what I feel as a grandfather in the relationship between this old man and the boy."

Decades ago, Sharif was among the motion-picture industry's most gorgeous men. Women around the world swooned when he appeared onscreen in such blockbuster films as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Funny Girl (1968).

Today he's still strikingly handsome, though time has turned his hair completely white and wrinkled his skin. As for his career, years of forgettable films -- among them Ashanti (1979), Oh, Heavenly Dog (1980) and The 13th Warrior (1999) -- have taken their toll.

Sharif winces at the mention of such titles.

"I was getting very little money, because I was under contract to Columbia up to and including Funny Girl," he says. "So all the time I was really a star I was getting $20,000 per film. They lent me out to MGM to do Doctor Zhivago.

"When that period ended," Sharif continues, "I wanted to make money. I did not make bad choices on principle -- I had very bad luck. I made five consecutive films after Funny Girl that were flops, but look at those films."

Those films include Sidney Lumet's The Appointment (1969), Richard Fleischer's Che! (1969), John Frankenheimer's The Horseman (1971) and Blake Edwards' The Tamarind Seed (1974). And Sharif is right: Despite the imprimatur of a major director, each was a critical and box-office disaster.

"Lumet, Frankenheimer, Fleischer, Edwards -- these are all people you'd long to work with," Sharif says. "The films were flops. I was just coming off my camel, and they had me playing Russians and Germans and so on. When you're a box-office draw, it doesn't matter, they'll have you play any nationality and adapt the part to fit you.

"But when you have flops and you're no more a box-office draw, or your value has gone down considerably, then they'll wait until they have a part that they think fits you," he says. "And, let's face it, I'm a foreigner in every country. I'm not Italian or French or Spanish or English or American. I'm not from any country that has a movie industry. I'm a foreigner everywhere, unless I stay in Egypt and make Egyptian films."

In response to his career downturn, Sharif dove passionately into other pursuits, ranging from tournament bridge to gambling at casinos and racetracks.

"I became a champion at bridge, and that helped me have some self-respect."

Despite the attention accorded him for Monsieur Ibrahim and despite his co-starring role with Viggo Mortensen in the upcoming Hidalgo -- set to open nationwide Friday -- Sharif refuses to believe that he's in the midst of any sort of renaissance. Even the word "comeback" rings hollow.

"It's not a comeback," he says. "To come back at almost 72? No, it's not a comeback.

"I made this film because I wanted to," Sharif says. "What I didn't want to do anymore was to make all these bad films I've been making over the past 25 years. I've been making a lot of rubbish. I stopped. I just said, 'Finished. No more. I want to keep some respect, some self-esteem. I don't want to go on like this for the rest of my old age.'

"My grandchildren were making fun of me," he adds. " 'Grandfather, that was really bad. The other one was bad, but this is even worse.' When this happens, you know you've got to stop.

"So I don't work unless something very good comes, that I like," the actor says. "This one came along, so I did it and I love it. I didn't care whether or not it would be shown. And then Disney offered me a wonderful, very large part with a lot of dialogue, interesting acting work, in Hidalgo, so I did that.

"And I'll wait for something else as good," he says. "If something comes, it comes. If nothing comes, I won't work."

More from New Line Cinema party:

Sharif, musing about his legendary amours, said, "I never really found myself wanting to surrender completely to depending and relying on a woman for my happiness. Maybe I missed out on something. I really can't say." -- Liz Smith, New York Newsday, March 3, 2004

Omar Sharif, Wrinkled and Proud
Richard Leiby, Washington Post, Mar. 2, 2004

Omar Sharif and his grandson, Omar Jr., at a New Line Cinema Oscar party. (Rich Leiby - The Washington Post)

• At a New Line Cinema Oscar party packed with pretty young things -- including Paris Hilton, who wasn't invited, but who would dare turn her away? -- stood Omar Sharif, 71, wearing his white hair and wrinkles with pride. "No plastic surgery for me," he said, grabbing his neck wattle. "I want to show my age." The Lebanese-Egyptian actor, who stars in New Line's "Monsieur Ibrahim," which he calls a "gentle film," mused about his 50-year career: "We try, and we keep on trying, and then we die."

In the Hollywood Hills mansion of New Line Co-Chairman Bob Shaye, Sharif introduced friends to his tall, dark and handsome grandson, Omar Jr., who described himself as an actor, "if someone hires me."

Fluent in several languages, the elder Sharif said he has taken up the study of ancient Greek. "One of two things will happen: I will have died learning something useless but beautiful, or I shall die having read Homer in the original. It may seem stupid but you have to have a beautiful mission in life."

In 1962's "Lawrence of Arabia," Sharif won international fame playing Col. T.E. Lawrence's friend, Ali. Nowadays he wonders about the feasibility of the U.S. mission in Iraq. "Quote me: No Arab country will be a democracy for 50 years. It's impossible. We are tribal people." Then he kissed both cheeks of Joseph Chacra, a film distributor based in Beirut who knew Sharif as a youth with another name. " Michael Shalhoub," Chacra said in greeting.

"My mother called me Omar," Sharif said. And it stuck.

THE DOCTOR IS IN AGAIN
Jonathan Curiel, San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 28, 2004

Though Omar Sharif is not a practicing Muslim, and he shakes his head at the impromptu way he converted to Islam 50 years ago (an imam had him recite two quick phrases, then sign his name to paper), Sharif is an advocate of the religion.

True Islam, he says, promotes compassion and understanding, not violence and terrorism -- which is one reason Sharif leaped at the chance to play the title character in "Monsieur Ibrahim." The movie, which opens Friday at Bay Area theaters, features Sharif as an old Muslim store owner who befriends a Jewish teen.

"I love Islam," Sharif says in an interview at his hotel in San Francisco, where he stopped for a promotional tour of the movie. "In reality, it's a very tolerant religion. With 'Monsieur Ibrahim,' I loved the idea that I could make my own little statement about people loving each other despite their religions."

Based on an autobiographical play by French author Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, "Monsieur Ibrahim" is set in early 1960s Paris. Sharif's character, who dresses in the garb of his homeland and has an unkempt beard, rarely talks to his customers, but his paternal, philosophizing nature comes out when a teenage boy named Momo starts stealing from the store. In Ibrahim, Momo finds the wisdom and attention he doesn't get at home from his single father.

Ibrahim's character, who's a Sufi Muslim, reassures Momo about everything from beauty ("You can find beauty wherever you look -- that's what my Koran says") to the pace he might take in life ("slowness -- that's the key to happiness"). It's unclear how much Ibrahim is aware of Momo's dalliances with neighborhood prostitutes. Momo's growing infatuation with sex and American music give the film a playfulness that parallels its more serious themes.

Muslim hard-liners in Sharif's native Egypt would undoubtedly denounce the film's portrayal of sex and the fact that Ibrahim's character drinks alcohol and befriends a Jew. Sharif says he's used to deflecting such finger- pointing. As the Arab world's biggest film star in the 1960s, Sharif was regularly condemned by religious authorities for working with Jews in Hollywood. Reviewers in Egypt still openly criticize him, he says.

"I have some enemies," he says, "but they're narrow-minded."

Before making "Monsieur Ibrahim," Sharif had disappeared from movies for four years -- and hadn't appeared in a film of critical significance for decades. The movies that made Sharif famous -- "Dr. Zhivago," "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Funny Girl" -- came at the beginning of his career, when he was one of the most recognizable people in the world. Sharif explains the drought this way: He made a series of flops after "Funny Girl" (which was released in 1968), then was no longer in demand as an actor, at which point he took roles in ill-advised movies that nevertheless paid well. The decline in his quality of films made him quit acting -- until he read the script for "Monsieur Ibrahim" and resumed his career.

Old Arabs, Sharif says, are the only parts he gets offered lately, but he doesn't mind. Sharif even jokes about it, just as he jokes about many things, including the way he changed his name at age 21. He was born Michael Chalhoub into a Christian family, but when he fell in love with an Egyptian film star (who was Muslim) and wanted to marry her, he converted to her religion and adopted a new moniker that he thought would register with audiences. The marriage didn't last.

"I chose a fantastic name," Sharif says. "I must say that's one of the greatest decisions in my life. I deserve my success only for my brilliance in finding a name."

At 71, Sharif has silver hair and dark circles under his eyes, a voice strained by age and weight that protrudes from his belly, but he retains an aura that once magnetized Ingrid Bergman, Barbra Streisand, Sophia Loren and countless moviegoers. When he walks around his beloved Paris, people shout his name, ask for his autograph and inevitably want to gab about "Dr. Zhivago" and his other landmark films. In his younger days, Sharif might be happy just to converse about film sets, the characters he portrayed, the women he was linked with and the game of bridge -- but not anymore. As he's gotten older, Sharif says he has a need to speak about subjects he's not known for, including his new philosophy of life: Live in the moment.

"I've decided not to think of anything in the past -- not even two minutes ago," he says. "I want to live intensely every single moment of what is left of my life, which should be for a long time, I hope. I'm not trying to be pessimistic. But if there was a way of erasing the past -- all my memory of it -- I'd like to do that. Of course, you can't. And of course, they come back into your mind sometimes."

Sharif seems to be wrestling with many thoughts these days, but it's clear that he's proud of "Monsieur Ibrahim." He says making the film cleared his conscience -- that it was a way of protesting the hatred that he says has washed over too many parts of the Middle East and elsewhere.

"I'm loved in the Arab world," Sharif says. "I had to say something about this killing and bloodshed. I had to say something or else be a coward. If I didn't do this, I'd have lived my life thinking I never said anything -- that I kept quiet."

As another visitor walks into the room, Sharif gets up from his chair and shakes hands. Sharif's grip is firm as the visitor introduces himself. Within minutes, the guest is asking him about "Lawrence of Arabia" and riding camels. Sharif answers with respect and diligence, but he can hardly wait for "Monsieur Ibrahim" to open in more U.S. cities. That way, his legion of American fans will have something new to mull over.

Omar Sharif wants it that way. Old images, he says, are tempting to cling to, but the person who appears in "Monsieur Ibrahim" is the person that Omar Sharif has become.

Omar Sharif still bigger than life at 72
Acclaimed actor receives best actor award for performance in Monsieur Ibrahim with modesty and humor

Ali Jaafar, Special to The Daily Star, Feb. 26, 2004 click here for original article

Sitting in the bar of his hotel, minutes away from Paris’ majestic Arc De Triomphe, the unique, husky burr of Omar Sharif’s voice is unmistakeable. It instantly conjures images from his countless screen appearances throughout his near 50-year-long career; from an idol on the Egyptian screen in films such as The Blazing Sun, to sex symbol following his appearances in Lawrence of Arabia and Dr Zhivago. Though his hair is now white and the slight dunes under his eyes betray his 72 years, it is the voice which immediately sends one back to the 1960s film, when his introduction astride a horse in Lawrence of Arabia set him on a course of global stardom the likes of which the Arab world had seldom seen. After accepting the Best Actor award at the Cesar Awards this weekend for his most recent performance as a Turkish shop keeper in Monsieur Ibrahim et Les Fleurs Du Koran, he joked onstage: “It must be awful for my fellow nominees to think they’re even worse actors than I am.”
Growing up in Egypt where he attended the famed English school Victoria College in Cairo, which boasts fellow alumni King Hussein of Jordan and Edward Said, he remembered fondly: “I had a great life, great childhood and great parents. I was immediately successful. My first Egyptian film was a hit. When I made my first international film it was a hit. I was nominated for an Oscar. I was born under a good star.”
Despite protests that he has “erased the past from my mind,” he is soon recounting tales with the likes of Peter O’Toole, Anthony Quinn and Peter Sellers. The figure of O’Toole pops up repeatedly, with the two remaining close friends slated to be reunited onscreen next year in an adaptation of the life of Gilgamesh, the first king of Mesopotamia.
“When we were shooting Lawrence of Arabia we used to work for 21 days and then have three days off. We’d get drunk for three days and take benzadrine so we could stay up and keep drinking before going back to the desert. We’d go and have fun in the flesh pots of Beirut.”
Admitting he was close to retirement when offered the role of Mr Ibrahim, and “getting fed up with doing bad things, losing my self-respect and dignity especially as my grandchildren are growing up and starting to make sarcastic remarks about my performances,” Sharif is a revelation in the film which was praised at the Cesars for its message of tolerance through its tale of friendship between the Muslim shop keeper and a young Jewish boy. Sharif is keen to stress the more universal elements of the story. “I thought it was beautifully written. At my age with my accent there are not many parts that I can play that are decent I have to play a foreigner. Unfortunately the parts of old Arabs are usually very conventional and caricatured but this one was different. It was irrelevant the fact that he was an Arab and the boy is Jewish. It’s not a religious film or political film. It so happens that because of the actuality of the problems between the Jews and the Muslims it got some kind of importance in the sense that we can live together. If the Israelis and Palestinians were at peace it wouldn’t be relevant what their religions were.”
There are few actors who can move so seamlessly from anecdotes of being arrested with Peter O’Toole and famous comedian Lenny Bruce the night before the US premiere of Lawrence, to serious minded discussions about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the current state of Arab culture. Yet Sharif has always been a compulsive blend of contradictions, on the one hand happy to perform in an endless stream of bad films through out the latter stages of his career, on the other a genuine intellectual lover of culture. When remembering the Cairo of his youth he visibly brightens, although he is unable to resist the temptation to let loose with his entertainingly acerbic wit on its current plight. “Cairo was beautiful at that time. It was clean. There were 3 million people in 1962 when I left. Imagine. Now nobody knows how many people there are. They can’t do a census in Egypt because when you go and knock on the door every family tells you they have five children for the evil eye, when they probably have 12 at least.”
It is a slightly surreal experience, sitting face to face with a living legend, a man who has lasted through the generations and encountered more highs and lows than most before his triumphant comeback this year with Mr Ibrahim and the forthcoming Hidalgo, opposite Viggo Mortenson. Sipping slowly on an espresso, his hands and eyes bounding expressively with each new joke, a smile is never far from his face. Admitting that he is “sentimentally and emotionally totally Egyptian but culturally Western,” he is scathing about Egypt’s chances of returning to the cultural center it was when he first began his career in the late 1950s.
“Not in my lifetime nor in my son’s lifetime. I hope in my grandchildren’s lifetime it might. We need the cycle to come back again to when we had the culture. Alec Guinness says to Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia: ‘Remember that Cordoba had two miles of city lights when London was still a village.’ That’s what we have to come back to. It doesn’t look near on the horizon to me but the whole world is upside down. You ask me about Egypt and the Middle East, but even in America it’s the same thing. It’s going berserk.”
Blaming much of the problems the Arab world is facing with fundamentalism as a consequence of a lack of education and poverty, he reveals his own frustrated attempts during his lifetime at trying to galvanize a more positive image in the media of Arabs. “Even people who have money amongst the rich Muslims, (like) the Saudis and Kuwaitis the oil people they don’t use it for any useful purposes. For years when I used to meet these people, I used to tell them with all your money why don’t you buy CNN or NBC or some big American television company? You have enough money, make them an offer they can’t refuse. I’m not suggesting that then you just make promotions for the Arabs but at least then you can shape a little bit our image around the world.”
While his suggestions were always met with disinterest, he was invited to become the voice of Orbit when the channel was first set up. “Every time someone says: ‘This is Orbit,’ in Arabic or English it’s my voice.”
Despite, or maybe because of the rich mosaic of his life he remains utterly and irresistibly human. While his reputation as a ladies’ man precedes him, he is quick to dispel any idea of any extraordinary prowess in this area. “I loved only one woman in my life, the woman that I married (Faten Hamama),” he says.
While his jet setting career eventually caused him to divorce, it is a measure of the man that he made this decision because “I was afraid to fall in love with some idiotic starlet … and leave my wife. So I decided to pre-emptively divorce and give her a chance to find somebody else. In those days we just lived happily ever after, only it turned out not to be ever after.”
With a number of prominent roles due to hit theater screens in coming months, Sharif is comfortable with his place in history, his place at the bar and the fact that he is able to finally spend more time with his son and grandchildren.

Omar the Magnificent
By Desson Thomson
Washington Post, February 22, 2004

The brown-eyed handsome man is back. And like wine, he's improved with time.

In fact, Omar Sharif, who made such an impact in the 1960s in such films as "Lawrence of Arabia," "Doctor Zhivago" and "Funny Girl," never really left. Although he's taken a few years off here and there, essentially he's worked in television and films ever since. But with two movies opening March 15, the Egyptian actor (who turns 72 this year) seems to be enjoying a higher profile.

In the French film "Monsieur Ibrahim," he's a Turkish shopkeeper who works in a Jewish section of Paris, where he befriends a young Jewish boy. And in "Hidalgo," a Disney film set in the late 19th century, he's a wealthy sheik who invites a renegade cowboy (Viggo Mortensen) to participate in a 3,000-mile survival race across the Arabian Desert.

Both movies get a boost from his presence. And in both cases, he's the main reason to see them. Call it the Omar mystique. Although age has made him a little more wizened these days and, yes, an orthodontist could do those wide-spaced teeth a world of good, he's still devilishly handsome. And the eyes are still a hypnotic, shimmering brown.

More importantly, his acting instincts seem more relaxed and assured than ever.

As the title character in "Monsieur Ibrahim," Sharif picks up on the loneliness of Momo (Pierre Boulanger), a shoplifter who's semiconsciously seeking a father figure. Little by little, Ibrahim teaches this boy the compassion and wisdom of the Koran and a bond is forged forever.

It's not just a fine acting performance from Sharif, it's a warm and fuzzy political telegram; and it faintly echoes another such highlight in Sharif's career. When he played husband to (and kissed) Barbra Streisand's Fanny Brice in the 1968 "Funny Girl," it was in the wake of the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt. It was the kiss seen around the world.

(It's clear that Sharif's cross-cultural sentiments don't just end on the screen. His son, who has previously married a Jew and a Catholic and is currently wed to a Muslim, has given Sharif a Jewish grandson and a Muslim one.)

In the Disney film, which is centered on the race, Sharif may be just a supporting character, but he's by far the most interesting presence in the movie. And when the sheik welcomes American visitor Frank T. Hopkins (Mortensen) into his desert tent, there are haunting echoes of "Lawrence of Arabia," the film that introduced Sharif to the world. Once again, Sharif is Arab royalty, and once again, he makes the other characters -- no matter how high they are on the marquee -- fade into the background.

At a dinner to celebrate the appearance of "Monsieur Ibrahim" at the Toronto Film Festival last year, a good-humored Sharif related anecdotes about the social success he experienced after the success of the 1962 "Lawrence." It seemed that many women he dated, particularly in America, were a little too giddy about that Sharif mystique. They expected, he said, "an Arab lover." Sharif said one's screen persona and the real thing don't necessarily match up. But, he concluded with a twinkle in his eye, it didn't stop them from trying.

Omar Sharif Returns to Acting
by Diana Saenger, Reel Talk click here for link to original article

Omar Sharif, the 72-year-old actor who still draws acclaim for his leads in Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago, sits at the interview table as bubbly as if this were his first interview. His dark eyes gleam, and his broad smile is warm and genuine. He seems more like someone talking about family matters with a close friend than an actor facing a journalist ready to ask about his latest film, Monsieur Ibrahim.

Question: How did this movie come to you?
Sharif: The director sent it to me. I hadn't played for maybe four or five years because I decided that I was making too many bad films for the last thirty years, which is a long time to make bad films. Some people say: 'I've made bad films for the last two-three years,' but thirty years is a long time. It got to the point where my grandchildren were making fun of my films. That's bad! I would stop unless something came along that made me enthusiastic so that I regained my love for my work. And then this script came along. I was going to Egypt on a cruise with my family; I read it on the deck of the ship; and I found it wonderful, beautifully written. I loved it.

Question: I think you have a genuine affection for this boy (Pierre Boulanger) in the film; did you have it in real life as well?
Sharif: All my life I've had a great affection for children. When I married my wife she had a daughter. And the daughter had a daughter after that. I brought them up, my son and my grandchildren. I love to interfere in everything. I love to play with children. I remember when my son was about five or six we used to play cowboys and Indians in Cairo, in my home. And my wife had some very precious Chinese vases, Ming or something extravagantly expensive. I used to play the Indian because he had to be the cowboy. So I had all of these bows and arrows, which had this rubber [tip], and I used to shoot and break the vases! And when my wife came home I'd say, "It's him!" And I never told her that it was me!

So when we cast this boy, he was a very ambitious little boy. I said, "Come to my hotel, and we'll bring an acting coach. I will give improvisations," not on this film, nothing to do with these characters because I don't want to be in the director's way. And while we were doing the film, I remember the director would give Pierre directions and he'd say, "I can't do this because I don't feel it; that's not my character. I wouldn't do this." He (François Dupeyron) used to go crazy! Within two or three weeks he (Pierre) was telling me how to act.

Question: Would you like people to identify you as Monsieur Ibrahim?
Sharif: Yes. I am a little bit Monsieur Ibrahim. My view of life is similar. When I read the part I said, "That's who I am, really." Or how I think, at any rate. The wise things that he says in the film are not really very wise: they are things us Orientals have, oral traditions. From fathers and grandfathers…they tell you things that you remember. It was like the old man was waiting to find another boy to play with. Because he's a boy at heart, this old man.

Question: What do you think of Mr. Lean as a filmmaker and how did the experience of making Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia challenge you as an actor?
Sharif: When David Lean chose me to play in Lawrence of Arabia I was an actor in Egypt with a rudimentary knowledge. I made twenty-one films but very melodramatic films. Everybody cried. After the performance and people left the theatre, they measure the film's success by how much tears there were. If the women cried, that would mean it's a good film.

Question: Did they cry because of your performance?
Sharif: We used to copy the melodramas of all the other cinemas in the world. There was a period of the Italian melodrama and we did Anna Karenina, of course, my wife and me. So Lawrence of Arabia was a teaching experience. Apart from that fact, we stayed twenty months in the desert… with no girls! I had a wife and a child. They weren't allowed to come and visit me. It was forbidden for women to come on the set because we were living in tents, and they were afraid if some people brought their girlfriends or wives, some funny stuff would happen with some other guy and disrupt the whole unit. It was like being in the army, but I became very close to Peter O'Toole and to the other actors. I was like a sponge. I used to go and see Alec Guinness and Peter O'Toole perform even when I was not on. And David Lean adopted me like a son, and gave me a lot of good advice about film acting. Things that are technical. He said, "With film acting you must be careful with…" this, that and the other. As Orientals we tend to move a lot, talk with our hands and our heads. He said, "No. When you're in a close shot you have to be very still or it changes the meaning of what I'm telling you."

I think he (Lean) didn't love actors. When they were actually on the set and shooting, he loved them because they the tools of his work. But he hated to dine with actors because actors are so boring they're always talking about themselves. It's true. When I have dinner with other actors, it's a race to see who has the better story.

Question: What was your motivation for taking this on now?
Sharif: If you make five flops in five years, you are finished. A person like me who has an accent is difficult to cast in normal films, because I'm a foreigner in every film industry. At the beginning when I was a box office star, it didn't matter. I played a German; can you believe an Egyptian playing a German? Hitler turns in his grave at this.

Question: In Monsieur Ibrahim, why are there references to the new wave of French films?
Sharif: The director is an admirer of these films, and he put in music of the 60s that he loved as a kid. The director is an interesting person, and was very good for me. Being a lazy person by nature, I need to be challenged. If you respect me too much when I'm working, it's bad for me. And I never have the courage to say that, because I never want to bother the electrician or those who want to go home. So I like the director to say that was lousy, and then I have to dig deeper into myself to get more real and more convincing for the director. He would say, "Cut. That was lousy." He almost spit it out of his mouth, he didn't even think about it. Then you'd see him blush, like what did I just say to Omar, and I'd say, no you're right. It's not like William Wyler, who would just say, that's lousy, do it again. So you'd keep doing it until he said print and he never told you how or why it's lousy.

There is a famous story of Laurence Olivier doing Withering Heights. Olivier had done this scene again and again and after 30 takes, he went to Wyler and said, "I've played this scene 30 times in 30 different ways, can you please tell me how you want this scene played," and Wyler said, "Better."

Question: What about the religious overtone of Monsieur Ibrahim?
Sharif: If this film was not made during this time when there is strife in the Middle east, it would be irrelevant that he was Jewish, the boy does not know what it means to be Jewish, his mother left him when he was a kid, and his father is a non-believer and does not talk to him so the boy does not know what it means to be Jewish.

Question: Do you still play bridge?
Sharif: I've stopped all together. I decided I didn't want to be a slave to any passion any more except for my work. I had too many passions, bridge, horses, gambling. I want to live a different kind of life, be with my family more because I didn't give them enough time. I was traveling and living in hotels, and if I get a good movie, I want more time to concentrate on it and be more focused. I decided if I could erase the past and the future from my mind I would be happy. I want to live every moment intensely and totally. This moment is the only moment for me. So if I go, I will probably live to be 100, but if I go I will not have wasted the last moments of my life.

Omar Sharif returns to form in Monsieur Ibrahim
Role of aged mentor offers screen great a possible shot at Oscar this year

Ali Jaafar
Special to The Daily Star, Jan. 23, 2004

LONDON: The name Omar Sharif evokes a multitude of images. From the young, strikingly handsome leading man of the golden age of Egyptian cinema in the 1950s and 1960s in films such as Youssef Chahine’s The Blazing Sun, to his international crossover success in the David Lean epics Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, through to his latter days seemingly spent carousing the world’s bars and casinos drinking, gambling and playing bridge. In recent years his appearances in the media have had more to do with his frequent late night scuffles than his onscreen work. It is therefore refreshing to see him return to the big screen triumphantly with his role in the new film, Monsieur Ibrahim et Les Fleurs Du Coran.
    Directed by Francois Dupeyron, the film tells the story of a friendship between a young Jewish boy, Momo, and Monsieur Ibrahim, an elderly Muslim shopkeeper in Paris in the early 60s. Unable to communicate with his real father and eventually abandoned, Momo finds in Monsieur Ibrahim a companion and surrogate father figure as the old shopkeeper gives him advice.
    Essentially a coming-of-age tale, the film is littered with plenty of funny, touching moments. This is a world in which the streets are lined with pretty, good natured prostitutes and Brigitte Bardot-esque film stars bring traffic to a halt as they pass through.
    In one scene, following Momo’s deflowering by a prostitute named Sylvie, we see the 16-year-old boy staring at himself in the mirror, the radio playing the soul songs of the era at full blast, to check if there is any difference in him now that “he is a man.”
    The film is most memorable, however, for the return to form of Sharif. Revisiting the decade in which he was one of the world’s biggest movie stars, he shines in every scene, bringing a warmth and humor that raises the film above the ordinary.
    When speaking about the film’s time frame, Sharif joked, “The 60s were my greatest decade. I was hated in Egypt because I worked with so many Jews. I must say that loving the movies and gambling I was meeting nothing but Jews, naturally. I signed a seven-year contract in Hollywood and I was directed by the greats: Fred Zinneman, William Wyler, Sidney Lumet. Unfortunately, I was in their worst films.”
    Fortunately for Sharif, his performance in Monsieur Ibrahim goes a long way to erase the recent memory of too many forgettable bit parts in average films. Having initially premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where he received a Lifetime Achievement Award, there has been a growing buzz that he may receive a Best Supporting Actor nomination at this year’s Oscars.
    Judging Sharif’s performance, it is not difficult to see why he has attracted such positive reviews. Throughout the film he imparts nuggets of wisdom to the young boy, from statements such as “Heaven is for all of us, not just for minors,” and “A man’s heart is like a caged bird: When you dance your heart sings and rises to Heaven.” While these lines may have fallen flat in the hands of a less capable, engaging character, with Sharif they are delivered with such a gently resonating authority you cannot help but be seduced by the character.
    The film also winningly plays with his reputation as a one time womanizer and playboy. At one point he jokes to Momo, “For men like you and me, not Alain Delon or Marlon Brando, you are beautiful through women.” The irony, of course, is that he once ranked alongside these figures, his own beauty as celebrated as that of co-stars such as Fatin Hamama and Julie Christie.
    A one-time classmate of the late Edward Said, Sharif’s decision to become an actor came as a result of an unlikely source.
“I really became an actor because of my mother. I was going to school at the French Friars. When I was about 10 I started to fatten up: too much chocolate, too many pastries. My mother could not stand that. She wanted me to be exceptional … beautiful and famous. I could not be fat. She enrolled me in an English school because the English don’t eat well. Thanks to her I lost weight and learned English. I owe her my career.”
    This diversity of influences in his childhood has served Sharif well throughout his career, where he able to perform in Arabic, English and French, as in Monsieur Ibrahim, with equal aplomb and helped make him a firm believer in the need for tolerance in the world today.
    “My son married a Jew, a Catholic and then a Muslim. That should tell you that I’m open to all religions.”
    This aspect of tolerance and understanding is one of the film’s central messages , and its depiction of a friendship between a Jew and Muslim comes at a time when some on both sides would seek to exploit and heighten tensions between the two communities. The film is quite radical with its positive portrayal of Islam and the teachings of the Koran. In one scene Ibrahim gives Momo a copy of the Koran to read, and throughout the film the character repeats the phrase, “I’m happy because I know what is in my Koran.”
    That this phrase is used to highlight the character’s wisdom and humanity is significant.
    In one memorable sequence he takes Momo around different churches in Turkey blindfolded, using only the smells to identify where they are. The smell of incense indicates they are in an Orthodox Church, the smell of candles that they are in a Catholic Church. When Ibrahim takes Momo to Mosque, the young boy complains that the entrance smells of feet from all the shoes left behind before prayers, to which the old man knowingly replies, “And your feet don’t stink. You’re no better than others. That odour reassures me. I smell myself. I smell you.”
    The two men then enter, Ibrahim praying while Momo looks on at the beauty of the architecture. That the film’s title refers to “The Flowers of the Koran” gives a clear indication of its position.
    That the film largely avoids becoming a didactic, trite exposition of the need for religious understanding is thanks to Sharif. At one point he tells Momo, “When you want to learn you don’t read a book. You talk to someone.”
    The look on his face as they sail in to Constantinople, the call to prayers audible from the sea, is worth a thousand words, his eyes tearing, caught between joy and sadness. “I left so long ago I don’t know what I’ll find,” he tells Momo as they approach his village.
    For Sharif, who himself spent so many years living and working away from his hometown of Alexandria , the words could have been written for him. The film even allows him to deliver his own eulogy, “ I’ve had a good life. I’m old. I had a wife. She died a long time ago. I still love her. I’ve returned home. I’m not scared. I know what’s in my Koran.” All this is delivered with the same worldly wise smile of a man who knows that even if he doesn’t win any awards for his performance, he has certainly given the world another flower to savor, another reminder of a better world.

Sharif's understated grace enlivens 'Ibrahim' Ty Burr, Boston Globe, March 12, 2004

The return of Omar Sharif AFTER DECADES OF LOUSY MOVIE PARTS, ONCE-HOT ACTOR FINDS ROLES MEATY ENOUGH TO BRING HIM OUT OF EXILE Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News, March 4, 2004

Sharif bridges gap in acting career with new roles Ian Spelling, Fort Worth Star Telegram, March 3, 2004

Sharif's understated grace enlivens 'Ibrahim'
Ty Burr, Boston Globe, March 12, 2004

The return of Omar Sharif
AFTER DECADES OF LOUSY MOVIE PARTS, ONCE-HOT ACTOR FINDS ROLES MEATY ENOUGH TO BRING HIM OUT OF EXILE
Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News, March 4, 2004

Sharif bridges gap in acting career with new roles
Ian Spelling, Fort Worth Star Telegram, March 3, 2004