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Actor:

Omar Sharif

  • Born: Apr 10, 1932 in Alexandria, Egypt
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: '60s-2000s
  • Major Genres: Drama, Adventure
  • Career Highlights: The 13th Warrior, Funny Girl, Doctor Zhivago
  • First Major Screen Credit: Goha (1958)

Biography

Born into a wealthy Lebanese-Egyptian family, Omar Sharif was a math and physics major at Cairo's Victory College. He worked briefly in his father's lumber business before pursuing an acting career. Entering movies in 1953 as Omar El-Sharif, the young actor's popularity zoomed when he married popular Egyptian star Faten Hamama (the marriage ended in 1974). Well established in his native country, Sharif made his English-language film debut (with one of the longest and most impressive "delayed entrances" ever filmed) as Sherif Ali Ibn El Karish in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Sharif's next film for Lean, Doctor Zhivago (1965), launched the "superstar" phase of the actor's career. When he was cast as Nicky Arnstein opposite Barbra Streisand's Fanny Brice in Funny Girl (1968), Sharif's films were banned in his native Egypt because he made love to a Jewish woman onscreen. As Sharif's starring career began its slow downward slide in the mid-'70s, he began devoting more and more time to his one great passion in life: bridge. Today Sharif is best known in card-playing circles as that famous bridge expert who happens to show up in movies from time to time. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

 
 

1932 -

Egyptian movie star.

The son of a wealthy merchant of Lebanese descent, Omar (also Umar) Sharif was born Michel Chalhoub on 10 April 1932. Educated at Victoria College in Alexandria, he converted from Christianity to Islam and changed his name to Omar Sharif before making his Egyptian film debut in The Blazing Sun in 1953. Between 1953 and 1958, he appeared in twenty-four Arabic-language films. On the set of his first film, Sharif became bored during the long pauses between his scenes and took up the game of bridge to while away the time. Sharif became internationally known after playing a lead role in the film Lawrence of Arabia, a part for which he received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. Sharif has appeared in many English-language films, including Doctor Zhivago and Funny Girl. He won the Golden Lion lifetime achievement award for fifty years in films in 2003 after a comeback in the film Mr. Ibrahim, in which he plays the role of an old Arab man in Paris who adopts a young Jewish boy. He also pursued his interest in bridge, becoming one of the world's leading authorities on the game and authoring several books on the subject.

Bibliography

Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Crowell, 1979.

DAVID WALDNER
UPDATED BY ROXANNE VARZI

 
Quotes By: Omar Sharif

Quotes:

"Making love? It's a communion with a woman. The bed is the holy table. There I find passion -- and purification."

 
Wikipedia: Omar Sharif
Omar Sharif
DrZhivagoSharif.jpg
Sharif in Doctor Zhivago
Birth name Michel Demitri Chalhoub
Born April 10 1932 (1932--) (age 75)
Flag of Egypt Alexandria, Egypt,
Spouse(s) Faten Hamama (1955-1974)

Omar Sharif (Arabic: عمر الشريف) (born April 10, 1932) is an Academy Award-nominated Egyptian actor who has starred in many Hollywood films. He has acted in Arabic, French, and English feature films. Sharif is most famous for his roles in Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia.

Biography

Early life

Sharif was born Michel Demitri Chalhoub in Alexandria, Egypt to Joseph Chalhoub, a timber merchant, and Claire (Saada),[1] an Egyptian .[citation needed] The family was of the Christian faith. Omar graduated from Alexandria's Victoria College, then from Cairo University with a mathematics and physics major. Afterwards, he worked with his father in the lumber business. Their business was less than successful following the investment of a large amount of capital in an endeavor to revitalize papyrus as a viable commodity.[citation needed]

Career

In 1953, Sharif began his acting career with a role in the Egyptian film, Sira` Fi al-Wadi, (English, The Blazing Sun or Struggle in the Valley or Fight in the Valley). Numerous Egyptian productions followed. He starred with his ex-wife, Faten Hamama, in several movies as romantic leads. Others include Ayyamna el helwa (Our Best Days, 1955), La anam (I Don't Sleep, 1958), Sayedat el kasr (Lady of the Castle, 1959) and the Anna Karenina-adaptation Nahr el hub (The River of Love 1961).

Sharif's first English language film was Lawrence of Arabia in 1962 where he played the role of Sherif Ali. This performance earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and worldwide fame. Sharif also played the title role in the 1965 film, Doctor Zhivago by David Lean. After a period in which he made headlines more for being a professional bridge player than an actor, he made a comeback in 2003 with the film adaptation of the novel Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran.

In November 2005, he was honored with a medal by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in recognition of his significant contributions to world film and cultural diversity. The medal - which is handed out very infrequently - is named after Russian director Sergei Eisenstein and could only be given out a total of 25 times by Russia's Mosfilm.

Personal life

Raised a Catholic,[citation needed] he converted to Islam to marry renowned Egyptian actress Faten Hamama in 1955 and took the name Omar al-Sharif. The marriage lasted almost 20 years and ended in 1974, producing one child Tarek Sharif (b. 1957), who appeared in Doctor Zhivago as Yuri at the age of 8. Rumours that Sharif would have married actress Sohair Ramzi in 1977, have turned out to be untrue. In fact, he never remarried and his attempt to restore his relationship with ex-wife Faten Hamama after returning to Egypt failed.[citation needed]. Sharif was once romantically linked to his Funny Girl co-star, Barbra Streisand.[citation needed]

Sharif is fluent in Arabic, English, Greek, and French. He also speaks some Italian and Turkish. grandchild.[2]

Sharif underwent a triple bypass surgery in 1992, and suffered a mild heart attack in 1994. Until his bypass, Sharif smoked 50 cigarettes a day; after the surgery, he quit easily.

In a Dallas hotel in 1970, Sharif said an intoxicated woman entered his room and demanded, at gunpoint, that he "make love to her". The actor said the circumstances did not endow him for the act, and the woman left cursing him, claiming he was a fraud.[citation needed]

On August 5, 2003, he received a one-month suspended prison sentence for striking a police officer in a suburban Parisian casino in July. He was also fined $1700 and ordered to pay the officer $340 in damages. (He had insulted and then head-butted the Pontoise policeman, who tried to intervene in an argument between the actor and a roulette croupier.)[citation needed] On February 13 2007 Sharif was "found guilty of assaulting a Beverly Hills parking lot attendant and breaking his nose".[3]

Gaming

Sharif, once among the world's best known contract bridge players, co-wrote a syndicated newspaper bridge column for the Chicago Tribune[4] for several years. He is also both author and co-author of several books on bridge and has licensed his name to a bridge computer game; initially released in a DOS version in 1992, Omar Sharif Bridge is still sold in Windows and "mobile platform" versions.[5] For a number of years his partner at international tournaments was football coach Tommy Prothro.

Sharif has also been a regular in casinos in France, where he once assaulted a casino employee after losing thousands of dollars on a single roulette bet.[6]

In 2006 Sharif declared both pastimes as ended when he was asked if he still played bridge: "I've stopped altogether. 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."[7]

Filmography

References

External links


 
 

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Copyrights:

Actor. Copyright © 2006 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Quotes By. Copyright © 2008 QuotationsBook.com. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Omar Sharif" Read more

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