His grandson, Omar Sharif Junior, last week posted a picture of the pair together on his Facebook page with the message: “I love you.”
Born in Egypt to a Syrian-Lebanese family, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1962 for playing Sherif Ali in “Lawrence of Arabia,” a movie that launched him to stardom.
Three years later he starred as the title character in Doctor Zhivago.
He tallied 118 acting credits, according to IMDB, and had been due to appear in a short movie ’1001 Inventions and the World of Ibn Al-Haytham.’
He was also an accomplished bridge player and keem gambler, reportedly once winning a million dollars at an Italian casino but also losing a villa in Lanzarote, Spain as a result of a card game in the 1970s.
Sharif was not “Lawrence of Arabia” director David Lean’s first choice to play Sherif Ali. the tribal leader with whom T.E. Lawrence teams up to help lead the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Lean had hired another actor but dropped him because his eyes weren’t the right color. The film’s producer, Sam Spiegel, went to Cairo to search for a replacement and found Sharif.
In his middle years Sharif began appearing in such films as “The Pink Panther Strikes Again,” “Oh Heavenly Dog!,” “The Baltimore Bullet” and others he dismissed as “rubbish.”
Sharif recently spent six months in the Red Sea resort city of Hurghada with his son but was moved to the Behman Hospital, one of Egypt’ best private psychiatry hospitals, after becoming very sick. HE was put on a drip after refusing to eat.