CAIRO — Omar Sharif has been in the news again. More well-known in recent years as a gambling man and Bridge player, the 71-year-old star of Dr. Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia was given a suspended sentence and fined in France for head-butting a policeman after a disagreement in a casino. Sayidaty, a sister publication of Arab News, spoke to his only son by Egyptian actress Faten Hamamah about growing up as the son of the temperamental actor.
Tareq Omar Sharif is giving acting a wide berth. Schooled in Switzerland and the UK, he lived all over the world before finally settling in Egypt at the age of 47. In the exclusive interview, he explained that it was his young wife who drew him back to the country of his birth.
“We met four years ago and fell in love,” he said. “Since she works in Egypt, we decided to go back home.” The couple have a small child, a four-year-old son named Akram.
As a child himself, Tareq was often left to his own devices and only saw his famous father during holidays. Did that affect him?
“Of course it affected me. But I learned to rely on myself. I learned how to make my own decisions without getting advice from people who are older than me.”
At the age of seven, Tareq had a part alongside his father in “Dr. Zhivago”, but that was the sum total of his acting experience. “I never thought about becoming an actor and I never even joined the drama club at my school,” he said. “But I worked as assistant producer with an English production company for a couple of years after I graduated from law school. I was spending 16 hours a day seven days a week working. But despite the long hours I enjoyed myself.”
But then he discovered that he was becoming too rootless for comfort. “One of my colleagues asked me where my house was, and I said: You mean my hotel? And that got me thinking. I have an Egyptian passport, I lived in France, Switzerland and the UK, but there was nowhere permanent. So I decided to settle down and get a house for myself.”
He married a Canadian and decided to settle down in Canada “so I would have an answer if anyone asked me where I lived.” His own son Omar, who is poised to enter university, is still there.
Tareq now describes his relationship with his father as close. “We have good relationship and I consider him a friend,” he said. “He always talks to me about his problems.”
He gets on well with his mother too, though he admits there is a difference. “I can’t talk to her about football, or sports in general,” he said. Paradoxically, now he lives in Egypt, he sees her less often than when he was living thousands of miles away. “I saw more of her when I lived in Canada, because we would spend entire vacations together.
In Cairo, I live 200 meters from her house but I do not see her a lot because I am so busy at work.”
Besides Bridge, Omar Sharif enjoys horse-racing and football, a passion Tareq clearly shares. “We always disagree, especially when we talk about politics or football. But we never get into serious arguments.
So what about his father’s famous temper? “He has a very bad temper,” Tareq admits. “He sometimes upsets the people who love him. He is a normal person just like everyone else. I remember once we were sitting in a restaurant.
Every time he wanted to eat something, an admirer came up and hugged him and wanted an autograph. This happened five times. In the end he just blew up,” Tareq said. “He was just trying to do something normal and have a meal in peace, it was absurd.”
Tareq is largely inured to reading about his father in the press, whether the reports are accurate or not. “He is a star,” Tareq said. “What do you expect?”
- Arab News Features 21 August 2003
