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The Egyptian actor who became one of the biggest film stars in the world — the dashing face of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, and the first Arab star to win global fame. 1932–2015.الممثّل المصري الذي صار من أكبر نجوم السينما في العالم — الوجه الأنيق في «لورنس العرب» و«دكتور زيفاجو»، وأول نجم عربي ينال شهرةً عالمية. 1932–2015
Omar Sharif was the Egyptian actor who broke into Hollywood's biggest pictures and became one of the most famous movie stars in the world. With his dark, dashing looks and an effortless screen presence, he rose from the leading man of Egyptian cinema to global icon — the first Arab actor to achieve true worldwide fame. Beyond the screen he was a cultured, multilingual gentleman-adventurer who was also, remarkably, ranked among the finest contract bridge players on the planet.
عمر الشريف هو الممثّل المصري الذي اقتحم أكبر أفلام هوليوود وصار من أشهر نجوم السينما في العالم. بملامحه السمراء الأنيقة وحضوره الطاغي على الشاشة، ارتقى من بطل السينما المصرية إلى أيقونة عالمية — وأول ممثّل عربي ينال شهرةً عالمية حقيقية. وخارج الشاشة كان رجلًا مثقّفًا متعدّد اللغات ومغامرًا، بل وكان — على نحو لافت — من أمهر لاعبي البريدج في العالم.
Beginnings · البدايات
A merchant’s son who became a leading man.ابن تاجرٍ صار بطلًا سينمائيًّا.
He was born Michel Demitri Chalhoub on 10 April 1932 in Alexandria, into a prosperous family of Lebanese-Syrian Christian background; his father was a lumber merchant. He was educated at the famous Victoria College in Alexandria and took a university degree in mathematics and physics at Cairo University before briefly working in the family business. But he had dreamed of acting since boyhood, and in 1954 he made his film debut opposite the great Egyptian star Faten Hamama. He quickly became one of the leading men of Egyptian cinema. In 1955 he married Hamama — converting to Islam and taking the screen name Omar Sharif — and appeared in more than twenty Egyptian films, becoming a household name across the Arab world.
A World Star · نجمٌ عالمي
Two films that made him an international icon.فيلمان جعلاه أيقونة عالمية.
In 1962, the British director David Lean cast Sharif as Sherif Ali in the epic Lawrence of Arabia, opposite Peter O'Toole. His entrance — a tiny figure emerging on a camel from a shimmering desert mirage — became one of the most famous moments in film history, and earned him an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe. Three years later Lean made him a star of a very different kind, casting him in the title role of Doctor Zhivago (1965), the sweeping romance set against the Russian Revolution — still the part many remember him for. He went on to star opposite Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl (1968) and in dozens more films across a career of over a hundred pictures, winning three Golden Globes. Fluent in six languages, he was cast all over the world.
Beyond the Screen · خارج الشاشة
A life as colourful as any of his roles.حياةٌ لا تقلّ ثراءً عن أيٍّ من أدواره.
Sharif's life off-screen was as cosmopolitan as his roles. A passionate horse-racing enthusiast and gambler, he was also a world-class contract bridge player, ranked among the very best, who wrote a long-running syndicated newspaper bridge column and lent his name to bridge books and games. Restless under the travel restrictions of Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt, he spent much of his career in self-exile in Europe — a separation that contributed to his amicable divorce from Faten Hamama in 1974. Decades later he won France's top acting honour, the César Award for Best Actor, for the tender film Monsieur Ibrahim (2003), proving his gifts had only deepened with age.
Legacy · الإرث
The Egyptian who charmed the whole world.المصري الذي أسر العالم بأسره.
Omar Sharif holds a unique place in film history as the first Arab actor to become a global star — opening doors for Middle Eastern actors in Western cinema and carrying an image of Egyptian and Arab elegance to audiences everywhere. In his final years he battled Alzheimer's disease, and he died of a heart attack in Cairo in 2015, at the age of 83. Tributes poured in from around the world, from Hollywood stars to Egyptian icons. To this day he is remembered as the eternal Doctor Zhivago and the noble Sherif Ali — a debonair, charming, and utterly singular ambassador of Egypt to the silver screens of the world.
Quick Facts · حقائق سريعة
Sources include Encyclopaedia Britannica, IMDb, Encyclopedia.com, and obituaries of Omar Sharif.