Loading ...Omar Sharif, 83, star in ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and ‘Doctor Zhivago’ - The Boston Globe
By Robert Berkvist
NEW YORK TIMES
In “Doctor Zhivago’’ in 1965, Mr. Sharif played the title character, who has an affair with Julie Christie against a backdrop of war in czarist Russia.
NEW YORK — Omar Sharif, the Egyptian actor who rode out of the desert in the 1962 screen epic “Lawrence of Arabia” into a glamorous, if brief, reign as an international star in such films as “Doctor Zhivago” and “The Night of the Generals,” died Friday in Cairo. He was 83.
His death, at a hospital, was caused by a heart attack, said his agent, Steve Kenis.
Mr. Sharif — who later became known for his mastery of bridge — was a commanding presence on screen. He was multilingual as well, and comfortable in almost any role or cultural setting.
He had appeared in a number of Egyptian films before the British director David Lean added him to the cast of “Lawrence of Arabia,” a freewheeling depiction of the real-life exploits of the British adventurer T.E. Lawrence, who led Arab fighters in a series of battles against Turkish occupiers. Peter O’Toole starred in the title role.
Mr. Sharif started in the Egyptian film industry, in a career spanning six decades.
Mr. Sharif played the Arab warrior Sherif Ali, who joins forces with Lawrence. The scene depicting his arrival is widely regarded as a classic piece of cinematic art. In it he appears at first as a tiny speck on the desert horizon and then slowly approaches, until he materializes into a figure riding a camel.
Mr. Sharif’s performance, in his first English-language film, brought him an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor.
The 1960s proved to be Mr. Sharif’s best, busiest, and most visible decade in Hollywood.
In quick succession, he appeared in “The Fall of the Roman Empire” (1964), as a king of ancient Armenia; “Behold a Pale Horse” (1964), as a priest during the Spanish Civil War; “The Yellow Rolls-Royce” (1965), as a Yugoslav patriot intent on saving his country from the Nazis; and “Genghis Khan” (1965), as the conquering Mongol leader.
What followed were: “Doctor Zhivago” (1965), as a Russian physician-poet whose world is torn apart by war; “The Night of the Generals” (1967), as a German intelligence officer; “Funny Girl” (1968), as a shifty gambler, and “Che” (1969), as the Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, opposite Jack Palance as Fidel Castro.
There were more films to come, but it was Mr. Sharif’s performance in “Doctor Zhivago” that is generally considered the high point of his career. Adapted from the novel by Boris Pasternak, the film was a sweeping portrait of war and rebellion in Czarist Russia.
Mr. Sharif, in the title role of Zhivago, the sensitive, brooding physician, plunges into a doomed love affair with another man’s wife, played by Julie Christie, as violence engulfs their lives.
World War II was the setting for “The Night of the Generals,” a drama about the Nazi high command in Warsaw that reunited Mr. Sharif and O’Toole. Mr. Sharif played a junior officer assigned to investigate a trio of generals, one of whom (O’Toole) has been killing prostitutes.
It was a long way from strife-torn Europe to the world of show business in New York, but Mr. Sharif made the leap when he played a dashing card shark in the movie version of the Broadway musical “Funny Girl.” Barbra Streisand, in her screen debut, starred as the singer and comedian Fanny Brice; Mr. Sharif played Nicky Arnstein, the gambler she falls in love with.
The involvement, both on and off screen, of Mr. Sharif and Streisand, a Jewish actress and a visible supporter of Israel, got him in trouble with the Egyptian authorities. Nevertheless, Mr. Sharif also appeared with Streisand in a sequel, “Funny Lady,” in 1975, although James Caan, as the showman Billy Rose, was the romantic lead.
Omar Sharif was born Michael Demetri Shalhoub on April 10, 1932, into a well-to-do family in Alexandria, Egypt. He graduated from Cairo University with a degree in mathematics and physics and worked for several years for the lumber company his father ran.
In the early 1950s he decided to capitalize on his good looks and ventured into film acting under the name Omar El-Sharif. He soon had a legion of fans, especially after costarring with Faten Hamama, one of Egypt’s leading actresses.
In 1955 he converted from Catholicism to Islam, and they were married soon after. They had a son, Tarek, who survives him, before separating in 1966 and divorcing in 1974. Hamama died in January. Further information on survivors was not immediately available.
Mr. Sharif appeared in dozens of movies after the 1960s, but his film career was clearly headed downhill. He liked to gamble, became an aficionado of horse racing and spent more and more time playing competitive bridge.
An expert on the game, he wrote a syndicated bridge column and a number of books on the subject, including “Omar Sharif’s Life in Bridge” (1983). His autobiography, “The Eternal Male,” written with Marie-Therese Guinchard, was published in 1977.
He was philosophical about the ups and downs of his career. “Look, I had it good and bad,” he said in an interview with the Times in 1995. “I did three films that are classics, which is very rare in itself, and they were all made within five years.”
He attributed his change of film fortune to what he called “the cultural revolution” at the end of the 1960s. “There was a rise of young, talented directors,” he added, “but they were making films about their own societies. There was no more room for a foreigner, so suddenly there were no more parts.”
There were in fact at least a few parts. Mr. Sharif continued to appear in films, many of them made for television. In “Pleasure Palace,” shown on CBS in 1980, he was a European playboy who comes to Las Vegas for a no-holds-barred gambling duel with a millionaire Texan. In the 1995 A&E film “Catherine the Great,” starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, he was a Russian prince.
His later films included “Monsieur Ibrahim” (2003), set in 1960s Paris, in which he played an aging Muslim grocer who befriends a rudderless Jewish teenager; “Hidalgo” (2004), as an Arabian sheik who invites an American cowboy (Viggo Mortensen) to participate in a survival race across the desert; and “War, Inc.” (2008), as a Middle Eastern oil magnate targeted by an assassin. His most recent film role was in the French family drama “Rock the Casbah” (2013).
In his later years, Mr. Sharif chose his parts carefully. “I decided,” he told the Times in 2003, “that I wanted to keep some dignity in my old age.”
He also insisted that age was no bar to remaining vital.
“My philosophy of life is that I’m living every moment intensely, as if it were the last moment,” he said. “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.”
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