The man Hollywood cast as a Russian doctor, an Austrian archduke, and an Arab prince was born Michel Youssef Dimitri Chalhoub in Alexandria, Egypt, held a degree in mathematics and physics, and grew up in a household where King Farouk sat at his mother's card table. This episode follows Omar Sharif from the upper-class bubble that Nasser's 1952 revolution dismantled, through his film debut opposite Egyptian screen queen Faten Hamama, to the seven-picture Columbia contract that came with his mirage entrance in Lawrence of Arabia.

The conversation covers his role as Hollywood's ethnic chameleon, Doctor Zhivago and the Finnish nickname Sapphire, the geopolitical firestorm over Funny Girl and his affair with Barbra Streisand one year after the Six-Day War, and the exit-visa system that pushed him into decades of hotel-bound exile. It also explo ...