“Is he still gorgeous?” Such was the most frequent question I was asked after interviewing Omar Sharif in Dublin last May. He was, I thought; at 82 every bit as charming and debonair off-screen as he was on.
But during the brief time I spent with him, Sharif was at pains to point out his life wasn’t quite so glamorous as the casual viewer might assume. He’d had only one love in his life, he said. His wife Faten Hamama – they divorced 40 years ago; she died in January.
He lived, he said, a quiet life in a small hotel in Paris where the staff were like his family. He took a daily walk, didn’t see many people, loved visits from his grandsons. Then we spoke about Paris; I said I was bringing my daughter over the following month. He asked if we’d visit.
I hadn’t really planned to and figured he’d hardly remember me, but we were staying near his hotel, so I messaged his assistant to say I was in town with my family. Minutes later, she got back to say Omar wanted us to come to his hotel the following evening, children included.
So six of us – three adults and my three daughters – duly drove the next day to the eighth arrondissement near the Champs-Élysées, parked up, running a bit late, with a mixture of giddiness and slight embarrassment.
We ran into the homely hotel out of the rain, and there in the foyer was Sharif himself, sitting on a long velvet sofa in trademark black poloneck, alongside a women who introduced herself as Petra. As soon as he saw us, he rose to his feet and welcomed us with open arms. A waiter was summoned.
“Darling, darling, what would you like?” he asked, requesting Coca-Cola for the children. Our youngest looked at me, smiling – she’s not usually allowed Coke. She liked him immediately. She wasn’t alone: Sharif was on top form. “Darling, have a glass of bubbly,” he commanded everyone.
We sat and chatted to Petra, who’d been a film editor on Catherine the Great, a production they worked on together back in the mid-1990s. Sharif seemed thrilled to have an audience. He really came alive turning the pages of a photographic book of scenes from 20th-century American cinema we’d brought him as a gift. There were some beautiful on-set stills of him in Lawrence of Arabia. “Peter O’Toole – I really loved that man,” said Sharif. “They sent me into the desert and I lived there with him for 100 days. And there were no women! Can you believe it?”
He spoke more about O’Toole – perhaps conscious that we were Irish, perhaps because he really missed him. “I was so sad when I heard he had died. We were like brothers. We had so much fun with each other we decided we would make another film together, no matter what the script was like, so we could be together.”
The book’s pages continued to turn. Every page prompted a new comment. Julie Christie was a “beautiful woman”. He reminisced about Bob Hope, Marlon Brando and Barbra Streisand (“She broke my heart”).
We thanked him and rose to say our goodbyes. “But the table is set for dinner,” he said. “Come, come!” Sharif is a man it is hard to refuse. So we followed him to a small, low-lit dining room, where we were the only guests. A long table was set with starched white tablecloths and silver- and crystalware.
He directed the children to one end of the table, the adults to the top. He winked at our nine-year-old, saying, “I love this girl! Children are wonderful!” No menus appeared; he had pre-ordered for everyone: delicious antipasti, rabbit, fish and then a selection of desserts to share. He clearly enjoyed being the centre of attention, entertaining us effusively with stories about his life and films, his card-playing (he was heading soon to Deauville for a month to play bridge with “some ladies”), interrupting himself only to tell to the children to order more food. Sharif was generous, charismatic and captivating company. Still gorgeous? Without question.
