Not a lot of fights.’ It was so good because the director was a brilliant man. There are no girls, no very famous actors at that time, only men and no action, not a lot of action. He spoke about the film to the Guardian in 2012: “When I made this film I thought: ‘This is a crazy thing. It was his first English-language role after appearing in over 20 Egyptian films. Sharif was Oscar-nominated for his role in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and went on to win a Golden Globe for his performance. I was very close to her, even though she beat me all the time!” She was an extraordinary woman – she lived till 1998. “She hit me on my backside every day till I was 14. “By night she would play cards, by day she would give me the slipper,” he said. In an interview in 2012, he recalled how his mother would socialise with King Farouk as well as dole out regular beatings to her son. Sharif, who was one of the few Arab actors to achieve mainstream Hollywood success, grew up in Cairo. His son, Tarek Sharif, and two grandsons survive him. We spent two days coming up with names and decided to call her Dinner Time.” This was a nod to the two’s most hallowed time together-dinner at a favorite restaurant in whatever city where they happened to be.In May his son revealed the star had been suffering from Alzheimer’s. “While leaving the auction, Grandfather was handed a yellow slip and I was shocked to learn that he had secretly purchased her for me. “Her muscles rolled beneath her glossy coat each time she walked past,” he writes. “Deauville is renowned in the horse-racing world for its races and for its thoroughbred auctions,” he explains.Īt one auction, when he went with his grandfather, the young Omar admired a thoroughbred with a dark chestnut coat. He speaks of his time he would spend with Grandfather Omar, in Cairo, Deauville, Madrid, London, Beverly Hills or wherever he was shooting a film. She had “exquisite taste,” as Sharif remembers, and kept villas in El Gouna on the Red Sea and in Sahel on the Mediterranean. Omar Sharif a PORT. His paternal grandmother, Fatem Hamama, was an Egyptian actress of such fame (the Elizabeth Taylor of Egypt) that she could rarely leave her home without being mobbed. Hulton Archive // Getty ImagesĪfter his parents’ divorce, he lived primarily with his mother in Montreal, spending fabulous vacations and summers with his father and Grandfather Omar, as he refers to him. The author’s grandfather at the 1965 premiere of Doctor Zhivago. “My father was Egyptian, my mother, Jewish, and early on I knew I was gay. “I grew up in distinctly different worlds,” he explains. He is soft spoken, extremely polite, and humble. In an interview, he speaks flawless English, though he is also fluent in French, Arabic, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Aramaic. He writes clearly and fluently, describing the day his grandfather died when he finds himself in Central Park, staring at “a large pond with half-dozen rowboats, some drifting aimlessly like me.” The younger Sharif was his grandfather’s best friend, protégé, and constant companion on the many escapades they shared. The face on the book’s cover is of a beautiful young man with enviable thick, dark lashes, chiseled features, and cheekbones reminiscent of the Golden Age star. shares memories of life with his movie-star grandfather as well as his own experiences, including his coming out-which had unexpected international repercussions. In his new memoir, A Tale of Two Omars, Omar Sharif Jr. With his huge liquid eyes and shock of thick dark hair, Sharif Sr. Zhivago, and Funny Girl among a host of others. And there are wonderful details of his escapades as the only grandson of his glamorous, globe-trotting grandfather-the legendary star of Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. It’s also a story of survival-instilled in him by his mother’s family, who survived the Holocaust death camps-but with his compassion and empathy intact. The heartfelt and heroic memoir traces his bullying as a child and teen, attempted suicide, the horrors of sex trafficking, and receiving tens of thousands of death threats after coming out in the Arab world. Grandson of the actor Omar Sharif, Sharif Jr., just 38, chronicles his complex and bravely iconoclastic life in his soon to be released autobiography A Tale of Two Omars. Marcel Proust wrote, “We are healed of suffering only by experiencing it to the full” and there is perhaps no more trenchant comment on the life of Omar Sharif Jr.
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