Omar Sharif's accent


Other posters have noted the prevalence of British accents in this film about Russians. And of course, as usual, the aristocrats speak an upper class British accent and the worker types speak lower class British accents.
But what was really jarring to me was Lebanese Omar Sharif, with his Egyptian accent. I love listening to it, but it was so different from everyone else's.

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that's egyptian? vaary intaaarvesting.



A bird in hand makes hard to blow nose-Confucius

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Well, he's from Egypt. I guess that's his normal accent; he always sounds that way, in movies or interviews.
He was highly criticized in Egypt when he kissed Barbra Streisand, a Jew, in "Funny Girl."

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Why do you call him Lebanese? Isn't he Egyptian?

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At least his casting makes more sense than Boris Karloff as an Indian chief in UNCONQUERED!

"We're fighting for this woman's honor, which is more than she ever did."

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Omar Sharif is an Egyptian, born and raised in Egypt. As a member of the upper class, he would have attended a private school, and may have had a British or French nanny bring him up. His first language though is French. In his early Arabic movies, his Egyptian Arabic accent sounded a tad foreign and not how an 'authentic' Egyptian would have sounded.

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As an Egyptian and a well educated one, he would still speak English with an accent.

It was no way jarring.

It's that man again!!

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Boris Karloff was actually Anglo-Indian, he was born in Bombay of mixed parentage.

Okay, he was part Indian, so what if he was the wrong kind!

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His parents were from Lebanon.

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