--- --- # Omar Sharif by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Jul 16, 2015 10:18 AM UTC by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Jul 16, 2015 10:18 AM UTC The first time I ever saw Omar Sharif was in the film Doctor Zhivago. I was a little brown kid living in the north of England who dreamed of one day being an actor in Hollywood. He was an inspiration to me. It was the first time I had seen a brown man in a Hollywood film who was neither a servant nor a savage. He was a gentleman, a brown gentleman, who held himself with dignity and had sex appeal. Many years later, as a young actor working as a waiter in New York, I was fortunate enough to serve the legend himself. “Doctor Zhivago,” I whispered to him, “it changed my life.” He leaned toward me and said, “Really? Mine too.” –AASIF MANDVI Mandvi is a Daily Show correspondent, an actor and producer on HBO’s The Brink and the author of No Land’s Man Omar Sharif ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3960514/omar-sharif/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3960514/omar-sharif/"},"headline":"Omar Sharif","datePublished":"2015-07-16T10:18:15.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T09:18:19.598Z","description":"Hollywood icon","url":"https://time.com/3960514/omar-sharif/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3960514/omar-sharif/","name":"Omar Sharif"}}]}] ```