Omar Sharif
Playing The Hand You're Dealt
‘Lawrence of Arabia’ made a huge impact on me. Having first caught it one TV Sunday as a child, I was fortunate to catch the digitally remastered 4K re-release in Leicester Square.
Astonishingly beautiful, originated on 70mm, it absolutely demands you see it as intended: Lean really did paint masterpieces meant for the silver screen. I wonder what he’d’ve made of phone-streaming. Perhaps next week I’ll post my review.. the story around the making is as almost epic as the film itself.
The reason I mention it though is, having met Alec Guinness, I never did cross paths with Peter O’Toole. I did however, get to meet Omar Sharif - and not through acting.
Credit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26277821
Through the late 90’s - early 00’s, as a result of Angels, I’d had a few years of doing Cannes Marché, so was acquainted with the scene. I was also an avid poker player (small potatoes) and it was through this I was invited to go to Cannes during the Festival and teach poker. Thereafter, there was a small tournament for the participants, the prize being to play Omar Sharif - at backgammon. And therein lies my story.
It’s well-documented in his prime he was a hell-raising gambler, which his stardom did nothing to abate, losing 750K in one night on a roulette wheel.
As I was setting up tables under a gently flapping white tent on the beach for our poker school, I turned around to find myself face to face with the man himself. He smiled his most disarming, toothsome, fabulous greeting, simultaneously grasping my hand warmly in his.
Expecting him to head off and attend more important things, he seemed in no hurry at all and with no one about to stop me, we soon got into easy conversation. As a follower of actors of colour in general, I’d always been aware he was a phenomenal Bridge player, a game I’d never had the opportunity to learn. Obviously though, I had to ask him about poker and why our winner wasn’t going to play the man at No Limit Hold ’em.
I didn’t pose the question quite as bluntly as that, just expressed surprise a game of backgammon was the prize for the winner of a poker tourney. Looking out across a sun-glazed azure sea, he took a moment before answering:
He used to play poker - a lot of poker, but had come to the conclusion it was a hard - as in ‘harsh’ - game he had no room for any more - no wish to play again. What was most remarkable though was he spoke as though we were friends. As though he’d known me - if not a lifetime, then intimately, as brothers. For long enough to know nothing he’d say would be dishonoured.
Relaxed, trusting, open. There was no artifice, no protective shell around the man that I’d come to recognise as commonplace among many rich and famous, beaten down too many times by the glare and the betrayals, the press hatchet-jobs(!) they’d experienced on the way to and at the top. He’d somehow retained a childlike immediacy, a straightforwardness, an unfettered clarity and natural warmth you seldom met - so fast - in adults.
He also loved backgammon - and did I play?
I confessed although I knew the rudiments, I was no Player, to which he responded I needed to develop my game and he would do his best to teach me. So over an afternoon board on a sun-drenched Mediterranean beach, I spent time tossing a couple of die from a leather cup with the most gracious, gentle, warmest of men, as - unpressed - he expanded in greater detail his parting with poker.
He’d been playing high-stakes across Europe, enjoying the lifestyle ‘Lawrence’ and ‘Zhivago’ afforded him to the hilt. One night - quite drunk - he basically lost everything. Money, home. Everything.
Propping up the bar in a Paris hotel one night thereafter, the owner (a fan) made himself known. Upon hearing the tale, he declared it a disgrace.. that no one as magnificent, as legendary (my words) as the Great Omar Sharif should be homeless and that it would be his honour if Mr Sharif would consider living - gratis - in his hotel for as long as he wished. Well, how could he refuse? So that’s what he did. He moved into a hotel in Paris.
The kindness of strangers. But also how it should be in life, somehow. When we do, we need to revere in real, practical, concrete terms, be that to war veterans who sacrificed so much, seminal scientists, breakthrough inventors and artists.
I know. I know.. I’m a romantic.. but that’s what filmmakers are. Sue me.
And what a way to live one’s life. Fully. As an artist and as a gambler. What is life, if not a gamble? I have nothing but total admiration for the man. When ‘legend’ is thrown around with abandon in these days of internet, it’s grounding to meet a true one.
I lost the backgammon, but won the afternoon.
That night, he lit up that poker tent. So many leaving thereafter with a grand fairytale to tell - how they spent time with Omar Sharif, under a beach tent at the Cannes Film Festival..
If you’d like to read a poker thriller about a guy looking for the biggest game on the planet, you could do a lot worse than -
Anatomy Of A Flop - 007
Continuing the dip into my 2006 Film School dissertation on representation in the media. Amazing to think it’s already 18-years ago.
Chapter Three continues…
I also realised that it would be almost impossible to carve a living out of acting, when the majority of the work I was doing was meaningless, or simply insulting. As I said, when I was working, I found myself too often there only to pay my bills. I simply wasn’t prepared to compromise my idea of right and wrong.
Without the financial safety net available to my Caucasian counterparts of theatre, radio and voiceover, (I had done all three of these, but only ever as an ‘Asian’) it was all proving untenable and, as importantly, I couldn’t grow as an actor and hone my craft.
I also knew that I wasn’t an actor simply as a job; I needed to express myself. I had however, become deeply frustrated - disenfranchised by what I was experiencing first-hand and something needed to change.. and it was blatantly obvious that it wouldn’t be the Industry that changed, or at least not in any great hurry.
I felt very strongly that if the Industry was indeed going to change, it needed to happen from the inside and, moreover, rather than just talking about it, I needed to get involved or I was just another bitter, whinging actor, for whom things hadn’t worked out.
My exploration at Film School and beyond therefore, is to try and create characters and address aspects of identity in my work that by default more truly represent Britain as I and many others experience it day-to-day, with a far greater spectrum of (non-stereotyped) people than I see shown in mainstream programming.
To this end I co-wrote, produced, co-starred and directed no-budget feature film Offending Angels raising the finance in the City, off the back of a short I made called Losing Heart. Crucially, I was utilising two non-white leads, where no mileage is made from their skin colour. No one appears to be doing this in this country with any regularity. I was therefore gratified when publication Eastern Eye upon the theatrical release of my film saw what I was doing and in their 2002 review:
‘...Opposite this gigantic film (Bend It Like Beckham) with its cliché roles, is supercool indie movie Offending Angels. The Low Budget film doesn’t have the glitz and glamour and all round hype of BILB, but what it does have is a British Asian playing an original role not driven by colour…Both BILB and Offending Angels are good films, but more films like the latter are needed if Asians are going to get a strong foothold in the mainstream…’
As mentioned, whilst at the NFTS I made an extra-curricular Hi-Def Short called Opportunist, which plays on audience preconceptions in terms not just of race, but sex and identity. I have endeavoured to explore these elements in all my work since moving behind the camera.
Opportunist is a film with which I wanted to confront preconceptions and prejudice. In the knowledge that film can very easily be utilised to challenge the everyday assumptions that people make, rather than reinforce them.
With this film, I hoped to address these issues through a story about seemingly one of the last taboos; sexuality... in this instance, that of a vulnerable deaf girl.
2006 Short Film - Opportunist
Chapter Four ‘Education’
I believe the hangover from the ‘innocent’ reinvention of our society in the media I’ve highlighted will be long and lasting; the damage deep. We are so strongly influenced by our American cousins, buying up their produce both film and TV, wholesale.
This has certainly benefited Black actors; we now have bonafide worldwide stars who are also box office draws… The likes of Wesley Snipes, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Rock, Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Laurence Fishburne, Terrence Howard and Eddie Murphy, being followed by a younger cohort, as a new generation makes its mark… but there is no concentrated Indian population in America. Bollywood, although the largest film producer in the world, remains insular, due largely perhaps to its language barrier as much as anything else.
In my belief, it is therefore imperative that we as Britons stop looking over the pond so much, take hold of our incredibly rich and diverse resources by the scruff of the neck and start to tell stories and truly begin to represent society on our screens as it really is. This would surely have the additional effect of bouncing us out of the current slough we are experiencing, where it feels as though there is nothing to watch on television and ‘Reality TV’ is king.
All it needs is a repositioning of our perceptions as to what good drama is and a reappraisal of our take on who makes up this extraordinary country of ours –but in a mainstream way, rather than in a ‘special interest’ or marginalised fashion. A notable by-product of this would certainly be the Americans actually coming to us to buy these stories... Stories after all are universal and good stories travel.
All I hope now is that there is room for me in this most influential of industries; That I can help to tell stories that relate more fully to the people that inhabit this Benetton land on a more than cosmetic level and not necessarily regardless of how we got here, as it’s imperative that we document the stories of how we all came to be here.
What is just as important is the stories of the here and now, without the Whitewash and throughout the viewing canon, from kids programmes to feature films. In my view, quite apart from representing nations, exploring stories and validating peoples, it might just prevent a dreadful case of mistaken identity; all that ignorance engenders.
Even today we can witness this careless attitude by programme makers. Coming back full circle, one only has to watch Primetime programming such as the hugely successful American import Lost, to see a British-Asian actor Naveen Andrews (Buddha Of Suburbia); of Indian descent, playing an Iraqi. Ok, so who cares? He’s pleased to have a good job in a long-running and seriously well-paid series. Others are pleased just to see a brown face in a well-received and top-rating program.
Credit: IMDb - Naveen Andrews
But if, as I suspect, prime-time TV is actually the principal source of education in terms of what people look like from other countries, what impact is this having- not just upon society in general, but more crucially, on Officers of our Customs & Excise, Immigration, jurors, MI5, MI6 the Police and SO19 Armed Response Units..?
As a result of the racially motivated attack on Stephen Lawrence in 22nd April 1993 and the subsequent mishandling of the crime scene before and after his death, as well as the subsequent mistrial, the MacPherson Report was issued in 1999. It stated – in no uncertain terms - that the Metropolitan Police Force was ‘institutionally racist’.
As per previous, one can successfully argue that racism is after all just a manifestation of ignorance. I only have to travel abroad and go through Customs these days to know how the climate has changed, both here and abroad. My mates have started calling me Al… Short for Al Qaida - once they witnessed my treatment at any given international border.
But what I contend compounded the error leading to the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, is that anyone growing up in this country since the Sixties, unless they have travelled abroad a good deal, spending some time in communities other than their own, would have had a very poor education in terms of even basic racial identification, if as I suspect, a diet of British television was their staple source of information.
I know very well growing up in this country that our educative system was extremely slewed towards an Anglo-centric view of the world history – and our part in it. I’m not saying that it was necessarily racist, I did indeed learn a great deal about the Slave Trade, for instance. I recall the one black kid in my very caucasian school refusing to take History classes.
Love it. Xx
Beautiful writing and honest discussion.