Do we like Omar Sharif?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Nothing harmful turned up in his own words, but two violent incidents on the record and a thin trail of good deeds I could verify keep him in the middle.
Omar Sharif was born Michel Shalhoub in Alexandria in 1932, into a wealthy family. He broke through in Egyptian cinema in the 1950s, then leapt to Hollywood as Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia, which earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. He then took the title role in Doctor Zhivago and starred opposite Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl.
Later in life he picked up a best actor award at Venice for the French film Monsieur Ibrahim in 2003. He told Al Jazeera in 2007 that he had always been “extremely lucky in my life”, which is a fair summary of a man who went from Alexandria to the top of the world's billing. He died in Cairo in July 2015, aged 83.
Then came Beverly Hills. A parking attendant sued over a 2005 incident, alleging Sharif was drunk, used a slur and then punched him after a dispute over a 20-euro note. Sharif pleaded no contest to misdemeanour battery in 2007 and was ordered to take anger management, and a judge later entered a default judgment of more than US$318,000 after he failed to show for a deposition. The reports I read carried no response from him.
On the harm test, honestly, the record is thin: I found no campaigning against any group, no conspiracy rabbit holes and no dodgy company in what I read. The one blemish is that alleged slur aimed at a migrant worker, which was part of a lawsuit and was never tested on its facts, because the judgment came by default. That earns an asterisk, not a fail.
On the good stuff, I could verify the career and the honours but not a great deal of charity or public service in sources I could open, so I won't pretend otherwise. That is honestly most of the list. A glittering screen legacy is real, but it's not the same as a kindness record.
So where does that leave us? A genuine star whose films still hold up, with no hate on the ledger, and two incidents where his temper hurt other people, one of them a worker with far less power than him. Enjoy the films, skip the sainthood.