From the streets of Alexandria to the deserts of Lawrence of Arabia and the snows of Doctor Zhivago, Omar Sharif carried a rare combination of elegance, warmth and restlessness, and became one of the first Arab stars to conquer world cinema.
Omar Sharif was born Michel Demitri Chalhoub in Alexandria, Egypt, on 10 April 1932. He became a star in Egyptian cinema in the 1950s, working in Arabic-language films, and he changed his name to Omar Sharif after converting to Islam and marrying the Egyptian star Faten Hamama. His international breakthrough came when David Lean cast him as Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), a role that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and introduced him to audiences around the world.
He followed it with Doctor Zhivago (1965), in which he played the poet and doctor Yuri Zhivago, opposite Julie Christie, in another David Lean epic. The film was a huge success, and Sharif became a leading man in international cinema, appearing in Funny Girl (1968) with Barbra Streisand, The Night of the Generals (1967), Mackenna’s Gold (1969) and many other films, in English, French and other languages.
In later years he returned to smaller, more personal roles, including Monsieur Ibrahim (2003), in which he played an elderly grocer who befriends a young boy in Paris, a performance that won him the César Award for Best Actor. He died in Cairo on 10 July 2015, at the age of 83. Sharif remains a figure of great affection: a bridge player, a traveller and a star who never lost the charm of the young Egyptian actor who first walked out of the desert into the cinema’s history.