When I saw the video of icon and leading man heartthrob back in the day, Omar Sharif of Dr. Zhivago fame ,I was beyond shocked. He abusively slapped a woman simply because she wanted to have her photo taken with him. It was appalling. What was more appalling was looking at the video frame by frame and seeing how he gets enraged, slaps her, goes off on her, feels guilty about it, tries to make nice but he is still angry as he considers her the catalyst for making him angry.
Meanwhile, like many abused women, she smiles through it all an accepts it. But the smile is tense and a smile of embarrassment. Her body language reveals fear. As he tries to make nice, she backs off. He agrees to take a photo with her but his body language shows that he still habors resentment towards her.
Several years ago a study was done which showed women in Qatar tend to overlook when they are abused. That is devatsating news. The woman Sharif slapped seems to demonstrate this .
Below are the shocking series of events.
Sharif’s body language shows he is enraged as he slaps this poor woman and yells at her that she needed to wait her turn to have her photo taken with him.
The woman fears him and his rage as she holds up her hand defensively.
The woman smiles and continues to smile throughout the ordeal.This is typical of abused women who may believe that they “deserved” it. No one deserves this kind of treatment-EVER!
He continues to berate her.He gestures wildly to ask her what he was thinking. All she did was try to get a photo with him. An Egyptian, Sharif is considered one of the biggest Middle Eastern actors of all time. So for this woman to get a little excited and perhaps not wait her turn to get his photo is understandable.
He continues to berate this poor woman unmercifully. It is so embarrassing that the woman standing next to him who is most likely a handler bows her hed in shame as she wears an ambivalent smile.
Sharif now has a sudden change of heart as he realizes what he has done in front of the cameras. Can you imagine what this Toxic man must do when there are no cameras present ?
You can actually see him thinking about what he just did as the expression on his face dramatically changed. His handler on the right has now distanced herself from Sharif as she looks downa nd away. Meanwhile the abuse victim continues to wear a mask like smile of embarrassment in order to save face..
As he has second thoughts as to what he did he bows his head in sham and walks over in the slapped woman’s direction. The photographer in the corner appears to be nervously amused and surprised . Hence the tense ambivalent smile. He wonders what Sharif will do and whether there will be some more berating or slapping.
He comes over to her and this time the abuse victim cannot even beaar to look at him as she holds up her hand with the palm of her hand showing in an defensive gesture. He looks at her with hate and disdain. She creates a barrier between them with her hand as she looks away , yet continues her ambivalent smile. In essence she is guarding herself from another potential slap and or verbal abuse from Sharif.
He tried to “make up” by allowing her to have a phot with him. She obliges as that is what she wanted in the first place. She continues smiling her mask like smile as she did throughout the entire ordeal. Meanwhile he turns his body away during this photo op as he really doesn’t want to have his photo taken with her but he does it to make himself feel better in trying to right his wrong in slapping her.
He now turns to look at her and says something in Arabic which causes her to have a genuine smile. Look at the crinlking around her eyes. It is no longer mask like. She is clearly taken aback as you can see by her retracted chin. This leads me to believe he may have even apologized to her. This is tyoical behavior of so many abusers. They las.h out, feel guilty and try to make things right.
Now they get ready to pose for the photographer. The woman is back to her mask like smile. He leans in for the phoo and looks at her to see how she is reacting to all of this. There is a look of remorse on his face as he leans into her and looks directly at her. She does not look at him. Instead she looks in the direction of the photograher. Even though she has a slight smile on her lips, her eyes reflect sadness.
The photo is snapped and the woman is elated. Here she wears a genuine smile. It was a huge price to pay, but she finally got what she wanted- a photo of her with Omar Sharif. He leans in but does NOT smile. He is not happy with himself that he acted like a complete jerk for the world to see. His hunched over shoulders show embarrassment, He feels even worse that this woman seems so happy now that the photo is taken, despite her slap.
The woman is so pleased and says thank you to him several times. In true Toxic Man form he turns away from he and doesn’t even acknowledge her thank you. He can’t wait to get away fast enough.
This is HORRIBLE! He is lucky the slap took place in Quatar. had it happened in the US, this woman would be very rich and he would be facing criminal charges as he would be hauled off to jail.
Having written the book Toxic Men which was released last year, I can assure you that Sharif shows all the characteristics of an abusive man. Here we all saw it frame after frame. Having seen the real Omar Sharif, there is no way I would even consider viewing any film he was in. This image of him slapping a woman is in my mind forever and that is the image I would see every time he would come on the screen for his acting scene.
This incident shows up a lot. It shows us how we idolize people for no good reason. We idolize them simply because they were in a film or on TV or they played well in a sport we like. If we admire and look up to someone we should know a lot more about them-like their character. Apparently this was no an isolated incident.
Apparently Sharif has a long history of getting physically abusive with people . In fact less than a decade ago, he attacked a policeman in a Paris casino and four years back, he pleaded no contest to” misdemeanor battery” for beating up a Beverly Hills parking attendant.
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