Film legend Omar Sharif gets solemn sendoff in Egypt

Participants in the funeral included Ashraf Zaki, the head of the Egyptian Actors’ Syndicate; Egyptian actors Jamil Rateb, Hussain Fahmi, Samir Sabri, and Farouk Al Feshawi as well as Sharif’s close friend Zahi Hawwas, a ex- archaeology minister.

His roles in foreign film are numerous and he won three Golden Globes.

Sharif’s agent confirmed in May that the actor, who played a wide range of characters on the big screen as well as TV, had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

Born Michel Shalhoub on April 10, 1932, to a wealthy family in Alexandria, Egypt, Sharif became interested in acting while studying mathematics and physics at university in Cairo.

The couple, who have a son, Tareq, divorced in 1974 when Sharif, already famous in his homeland, launched a career in Hollywood.

Hamama died in January of this year. “They are historic and everyone loved them”, said Bassiuny referring to Sharif and Hamama, whose funeral he had also attended. I will always miss him. I grew up on Lawrence and Zhivago. Born to act rather than work in his father’s lumber mill, Sharif was an instant hit when he got his big break in English cinema in a dramatic entrance in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia.

Sharif played the role of Sharif Ali in the British drama “Lawrence of Arabia” in 1962, starring alongside Peter O’Toole and Anthony Quinn.

The tragic demise of legendary actor Omar Sharif has left many in grief including Hollywood stars.

But in 2003 he returned with a part in the French film Monsieur Ibraham, portraying a Muslim shopkeeper in Paris who adopts a Jewish boy.

Sharif kept working over the following decades, often in television movies, and in later years became equally renowned for his prowess as a bridge player and owner of thoroughbred racehorses. He wrote many books and newspaper columns about bridge and licensed his name to a computer game called “Omar Sharif Bridge”.

He said: “I stopped making movies because, for the last 25 years, I’ve been making a lot of rubbish because I was in debt all the time”. I salute him’ said veteran actor Vincent D’Onofrio.

“I decided I didn’t want to be a slave to any passion any more except for my work”, he said. Given his playboy lifestyle and his penchant to gamble – which also came with consummate expertise in bridge – it came as no surprise that he had then to take on even minor roles to sustain himself later in a career that was virtually downhill from that phenomenal start, except for one or two cinematic roles that did his talent justice.