Welcome to the Shrine to Actors

A recent promo for Patrick Swayze’s current undercover cop drama, The Beast, quoted a critic as saying “Patrick Swayze Elevates.” I found this amusing, because it was one of those cases of removing a quote from its context, which in this case was that the talented Patrick Swayze elevated the weak material into something worth watching. They didn’t want you to know about the “weak material” part, so they left that off, giving us a quote that leaves us imagining Patrick Swayze using telekinesis to move furniture around the room.

Sarcasm aside, there is a truth to that statement, even when incomplete. For some actors, that statement is always true about their performance. It doesn’t matter whether they are in a comedy, drama, TV series, or play, an Oscar winner or quirky art film or absolute dreck. They always make the material better, and when they can’t, they still remain admirably untarnished by the unworthiness around them. These actors do, in fact, elevate and perhaps even levitate above their lesser material.

This came to me as I was watching this week’s mini-series event, The Last Templar, on NBC. This harmless bit of fluffy DaVinci Code-lite entertainment wasn’t awful, but wasn’t great either. Some winning moments and a few excellent scenes were lost amid rushed or vague storytelling and painfully obvious soapy dialogue. All the actors tried admirably to work with the material, but it wasn’t until the end of the series that an actor in a cameo appearance truly grabbed my attention and managed to get real empathy and emotion from me. That actor is Omar Sharif.

Most famous for roles in acclaimed films Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, Omar Sharif has acted in 111 TV and movie projects, ranging from epic historical pieces like Peter the Great (1986) and The Ten Commandments (2006) to comedic stints in a Pink Panther movie and Val Kilmer’s 1984 spoof film Top Secret! He seems to turn up any time a Middle-Eastern or Mediterranean character is called for, and is fluent in English, Arabic, French, Greek, and Italian. His distinctive gap-toothed smile and piercing gaze adapt equally well to both dramatic and satirical roles. He is relaxed and comfortable on camera and often appears as a warm and wise figure to assist the hero or heroine, as he did this week in The Last Templar.

Here he is as Sheikh Riyadh in Hidalgo, a traditional man who learns to see the value of his daughter with a little help from cowboy Frank Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen).

With a shadowy Viggo Mortensen…

Omar Sharif creates a formidable character here, calm and congenial but infused with power and privilege and even a little danger. Hidalgo wouldn’t have worked as well as it did without actors Sharif and Mortensen, who take the material seriously and establish characters with sincerity.

Check Omar Sharif’s IMDB listing for information on all of his film and television roles. Use the handy Amazon.com box up top of this blog to order your favorite Omar Sharif titles.