Omar Sharif - biography

“I’d rather be playing bridge than making a bad movie.”

“Othello is a part I’ve dreamed of playing.  It’s me, the Moor.  It hasn’t been played by a Moor before.”

“There are lots of wonderful old Italian actors.  You don’t need to take an Egyptian to play an Italian actor.”

“He read his mind.  He’s a strange sort of man, isn’t he?  It’s not just the advice and the wisdom that he has.”

“I’m very wary about giving advice.  I think it’s very dangerous to give advice to people, except if you know them very well.”

“I don’t think any actor feels comfortable watching themselves in movies.  You must be very narcissistic.  The problem with your own opinion of yourself is that contrary to the normal spectators, when you watch a film you are in, you only watch yourself.”

“This character in the film, these things that he says which sound like advice and wise things, they are very common for Orientals.  It’s all the tradition.”

“This is one of the factors that also made me very much want to make this film, apart from the fact that I loved it.  If the boy hadn’t been Jewish and the man hadn’t been Muslim, it wouldn’t have made any difference to the film.  I don’t think it’s relevant, really.”

“I had too many big passions in life and it gets in the way of work.  You can’t concentrate properly on the one thing.”

“I want to live every moment totally and intensely.  Even when I’m giving an interview or talking to people, that’s all that I’m thinking about.”

“Working gets in the way of living.”

“My philosophy is that when I go out of my room, I’m prepared to love everybody I meet, unless they’re bad.”

“The reason it has relevance is because I, as a popular Arab personality - the Arab people like me and respect me - thought it was time for me to make an ever so tiny statement about what I thought about this whole thing.”

“I can’t say I gave up totally my passion for women but almost.”

“Women know when they’ve got the menopause but men don’t quite know.  They know it afterwards.”

“I didn’t want to be a slave to any passion anymore.  I gave up card playing altogether, even bridge and gambling - more or less.  It took me a few years to get out of it.”

“I don’t know what sex appeal is.  I don’t think you can have sex appeal knowingly.  The people who seduce me personally are the people who seem not to know they’re seductive, and not to know they have sex appeal.”

“I love to be with my son and my grandchildren, like normal people.  I have no particular idea of what I represent to other people.  It’s very mysterious to me.  I don’t understand it.”

“I see only defects because I’m not following the scene as it were.  I’m not following the other person.  It’s like the best thing to clarify this is the theater.”

“They didn’t accept me theory - not a theory, but just a thought I had about this character.  I noticed that this man only exists when the boy comes into the grocery.”

Omar Sharif has appeared in the following films:
Siraa Fil-Wadi (1954)
Shaytan al-Sahra (1954)
Ayyamine el helwa (1955)
Siraa Fil-Mina (1956)
La Châtelaine du Liban (1956)
Ard el salam (1957)
Ghaltet habibi (1958)
La anam (1958)
Shatie el asrar (1958)
Goha (1958)
Sayedat el kasr (1959)
Maweed maa maghoul (1959)
Fadiha fil Zamalek (1959)
Min ajal emraa (1959)
Seraa fil Nil (1959)
Bidaya wa nihaya (1960)
Lawet el hub (1960)
Fi baitina rajul (1961)
Nahr el hub (1961)
Hubbi el wahid (1961)
Gharam el assiad (1961)
Ishayat hub (1961)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
Behold a Pale Horse (1964)
The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964)
El Mamalik (1965)
Genghis Khan (1965)
La Fabuleuse aventure de Marco Polo (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Poppies Are Also Flowers (1966)
The Night of the Generals (1967)
C’era una volta... (1967)
Funny Girl (1968)
Mayerling (1968)
Mackenna’s Gold (1969)
The Appointment (1969)
Che! (1969)
Trois hommes sur un cheval (1969)
The Last Valley (1970)
The Horsemen (1971)
Le Casse (1971)
Le Droit d’aimer (1972)
La Isla misteriosa (1973)
The Tamarind Seed (1974)
Juggernaut (1974)
Funny Lady (1975)
Ace Up My Sleeve (1976)
The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
Ashanti (1979)
Bloodline (1979)
S+H+E: Security Hazards Expert (1980)
The Baltimore Bullet (1980)
Oh Heavenly Dog (1980)
Inchon (1981)
Green Ice (1981)
Ayoub (1983)
Top Secret! (1984)
Grand Larceny (1987)
Keys to Freedom (1988)
Les Possédés (1988)
Les Pyramides bleues (1988)
Aragoz, al- (1989)
The Rainbow Thief (1990)
Mountains of the Moon (1990)
Viaggio d’amore (1990)
Moaten Masry, al- (1991)
Mayrig (1992)
Beyond Justice (1992)
Tengoku no Taizai (1992)
588 rue paradis (1993)
Dehk, we leab we gad we hob (1993)
Heaven Before I Die (1997)
The 13th Warrior (1999)
Censor (2001)
The Parole Officer (2001)
Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran (2003)
Hidalgo (2004)
Benji: Off the Leash! (2004)
Fuoco su di me (2006)
One Night with the King (2006)
10,000 BC (2008)
J’ai oublié de te dire (2010)