Tener’s death of Omar Sharif: As “Dr. Schiwago” he remains unforgettable

These eyes! No actor in front of him and nobody afterwards had such expressive eyes as Omar Sharif (1932-2015). And when they filled with tears, every word became superfluous. Without them, the canvas epic “Dr. Schiwago” from 1965 would be deteriorated to a feast. Only the eyes of the Omar Sharif gave the film a cult depth.

Three years earlier, these embers had great appearances in “Lawrence of Arabia”. Omar Sharif played the Bedouin leader Sherif Ali, an impulsive, but, as it were, elegant and noble Arab leader – the beginning of a world career.

All of this is brilliant film history, because Omar Sharif died in 2015. On July 10th, his death anniversary for the tenth time.

Actually, it was called Michel Dimitri Chalhoub and came from a Lebanese-Syrian family, Milkitic Greek-Catholic Christians who had moved to Egypt. He was born there in Alexandria.

The chalhoubs belong to the upper class, the father runs a wooden trade, in the family it is not arabic, but French, and English at school. There is also a school theater at school in Cairo, and that laid the foundation for his career. He later says: “If there was no theater at school, I would have been a wooden dealer like my father.”

At first he studies mathematics and physics at the University of Cairo, even does the conclusion and everything actually speaks for a professional life as a wooden dealer, but then the revolution of 1952. The Egyptian King Faruk (1920-1965), a friend of the family, is being hunted, and the devil is also the good business of wood trade. The young chalhoub, who, in addition to the natural sciences, is also interested in Western culture and literature and has now also learned Arabic, is seriously thinking about acting. Coincidence helps him jump.

In a tea room in Cairo, he meets the Egyptian director Youssef Chahine (1926-2008). In 1954 he offered the handsome young man the leading role in the Egyptian film “Tödliche revenge”. During the shooting, he falls in love with the female female actor Faten Hamama (1931-2015), which is one year older, who was worshiped as a film goddess in the Arab world at that time.

For marketing reasons, he accepted the artist name Omar el-Sharif, from which Omar Sharif becomes. In 1955 he took the next step: In order to be able to marry Hamama, he merges from Christianity to Islam. Two years after the wedding, the son Tarek was born in 1957.

Faten Hamama and Omar Sharif become the new dream couple of the Egyptian cinema, which is praised as the Hollywood of the Middle East. The couple made several films together, and before the British star director David Lean (1908-1991) discovered Omar Sharif for his monumental work “Lawrence of Arabia” in the early 1960s, he played in a total of 23 Egyptian films.

“Lawrence of Arabia” changes everything. The western film world, especially Hollywood, becomes aware of him. With his leading role in “Dr. Schiwago”, for which director David Lean occupies him again, the next highlight. He doesn’t win the Oscar for that, but the Golden Globe as the best leading actor. After all, his role in “Lawrence of Arabia” had brought him an Oscar nomination as the best supporting actor.

Both films catapult Omar Sharif to the first division of the Hollywood stars. And he becomes the new crush of women. Millions of women dream of Omar Sharif. He once said himself that he would sometimes like to be the man that everyone saw in Omar Sharif. In truth, however, he “had very few friends from all men I know”. He has to love to be with someone. “I don’t like one-night stands.”

He has smaller affairs with the actresses Pat Sheehan and Dodie Marshall. In the film “Funny Girl” (1968) he plays with Barbra Streisand (83). This cinema romance of the Egyptian Muslim and the American Jewish became a political issue shortly after the six-day war between Israel and the Arab countries. He becomes a persona non grata in Egypt. He is no longer allowed to travel to his home country for almost ten years.

Ultimately, this also means the end of his marriage to Faten Hamama. The divorce is 1974. Omar Sharif has always described this woman as the “only love” of his life. He never watched her again.

For more than ten years, he walks through Europe homeless, lives in hotels and describes his lonely life as follows: “If you come to a place again, where you don’t know one, then the only place you can go to as a prominent is the casino. There you eat dinner alone, and then you play a bit to give your life a bit excitement and to fight it.”

He has been one of the best Bridge players in the world since his youth. But he also loves gambling and horse racing, at times has several racing horses – and loses his fortune with this passion. So he has to work to make a living, as he once put it himself, he is “always a film behind my debts”. He participated in over 100 films, most of them were “garbage” after 1970.

In 2003 he played his most beautiful late role in “Monsieur Ibrahim and the flowers of the Koran”, in which he represents a Muslim dealer who takes care of a Jewish boy in Paris.

He spends his last years with his last life partner, the French actress Andréa Ferréol (78), in Cairo. He often sees his son Tarek (68), who is also an actor and his two grandchildren. He is heart -sick, has given up three bypasses and smoking. And he fights for the tolerance between the world religions.

In one of his last interviews, he says the “Daily News Egypt” in 2010: “I believe in God and I believe in religion. The extraordinary is that the Jews believe that only Jews could come into paradise, Christians, only Christians could come into paradise, and the Muslims could only believe Muslims in paradise. Why should God be born in his great fairness who is not born to paradise Can?

On July 10, 2015, Omar Sharif died in Cairo at the age of 83 in the consequences of a second heart attack. He is buried in the El-Sayeda-Nafisa cemetery cemetery. His coffin was covered with the Egyptian flag and a black light towel.