Omar Sharif, whose career nosedived after a string of hits -- Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence Of Arabia and Funny Girl -- in the 1960s, is getting plenty of respect these days.
"My God, I saw Lawrence today," gushed a Somali cab driver in downtown Toronto, who had spotted Sharif near the Four Seasons Hotel. Local newspapers ran lengthy stories on the star, who was seen on several days walking briskly in midtown Toronto, despite a slight limp.
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A woman, perhaps in her mid-50s, declared that Sharif looked sexier than Sean Connery.
Sharif, 71, flew into Toronto a few days after he was awarded a Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Film Festival. He was in Toronto to promote his film Monsieur Ibrahim et les Fleurs du Coran (Mr Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran), a story of friendship between an Arab and a Jew living in Paris. He plays a gentle and wise Muslim grocer who adopts a Jewish boy.
Though critics found the movie too sentimental and emotionally manipulative, many felt Sharif excelled in the role of the elderly Arab, leading to talk of an Oscar nomination.
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But Sharif, who was nominated for an Oscar for Lawrence Of Arabia nearly four decades ago, told reporters he was not betting on a nomination. The Oscars, he said, often went to spectacular big-budget films. Monsieur Ibrahim is a small film made out of conviction and a good heart.
Sharif readily admitted that he had worked in many awful films in the past, often just for money. There would be no more "Ali Baba-type stuff" for him, said the star born in a Coptic Christian family in Alexandria, Egypt. He would pick up a film only if he felt its subject was compelling, and one which offered him a role with meaning and dignity.
Sharif, an expert bridge player and a ceaseless gambler, claimed he had "erased the past and the future". He added that he is content living in the present, taking up a well-written part now and then.
He now plays an Arab prince in the big-budget Disney movie, Hidalgo, a story with horse-racing as its backdrop. The film is expected to be released in mid-2004.
Apparently, Sharif is not playing a stereotypical, big-nosed, pot-bellied Arab with a menacing mind.
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