Omar Sharif’s favourite music
mainThe Egyptian actor, who died today, chose his eight favourite tracks for Desert Island Discs here.
Strangely, Lara’s Theme was not among them…
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Sad loss, though his signature roles will live forever.
Surprisingly banal list of favourites for such a dashing and romantic citizen of the world, however. Like his book choice, though.
I would suggest it is a very eclectic mix of music that he has chosen, and who would have thought that he was a Pink Floyd fan. Or course he could have been pretentious and chosen all classic bits, plus one of the inevitable Wagner war horses to impress the music critics and cultural snobs. But no, and any man who chooses Donna Summer and Edith Piaf in the same list gets a big thumbs up from me.
“It takes more than a compass, Englishman.”
He looks a bit like John Cleese in that photo.
Mr. Sharif’s incredible entrance riding a black horse across the Sahara in Lawrence of Arabia guaranteed that I would be his fan for life… and what a long and valuable life his has been…
I used to read his bridge column faithfully.
Oh, Pamela Brown, you have, as Americans would say, ‘misremembered’ – Sharif Ali arrived on a CAMEL across the blazing ARABIAN desert. And even more poignantly, at the end of the film, after the disastrous Damascus conference, turns away from Lawrence and disappears into a black shadow. What a beginning to a Hollywood career.
I first saw the film a week or so after its December ’62 premiere, and again at the BFI last month – a late Father’s Day present from my 27 year old son, who was stunned by the film (‘No CGI!’), and Jarre’s tremendous score – the LPO conducted, not by Sir Adrian Boult as stated in the credits, but by the composer himself. One of the great films and film scores.