Doctor Zhivago Star Omar Sharif Dies Aged 83

Doctor Zhivago star Omar Sharif has died after suffering a heart attack in hospital in Cairo.

The 83-year-old Egyptian-born actor had been in a hospital for patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease, his agent said.

Sharif rose to international stardom with his role in the 1962 epic Lawrence Of Arabia - his first English-language film.

He earned an Oscar nomination for his turn as Sherif Ali in David Lean's iconic film opposite Peter O'Toole, making a stunning entrance as he first appeared as a distant speck in the swirling desert sand before emerging on a camel.

Sharif followed the breakthrough performance with the title role in Lean's Doctor Zhivago, co-starring Julie Christie, which the actor never believed was as good as it could have been.

"It's sentimental. Too much of that music," he once said, referring to the Oscar-winning score.

He then played Fanny Brice's husband, Nicky Arnstein, in Funny Girl alongside Barbra Streisand.

The film, which began shooting during the Six Day War between Israel and Egypt, was banned in his native country because he played a Jew.

James Cameron-Wilson, the executive editor of the Film Review Annual, said Sharif was "probably the most famous Egyptian since Tutankamun".

"What was extraordinary about him was those amazing liquid brown eyes. He was a massive screen idol and Latin lover writ large," he told Sky News.

"He was a real screen legend."

In the 1990s - after appearing in a series of films he described as "rubbish" - he began declining all the roles he was offered.

But in 2003 he returned with a part in the French film Monsieur Ibraham, portraying a Muslim shopkeeper in Paris who adopts a Jewish boy.

The role won him the Cesar, the French equivalent of the Oscar, and it was followed by Hidalgo, in which he played a desert sheikh who duels 11 assailants with a sword.

His last completed feature film credits were in 2013.

Sharif was also known as a highly-accomplished bridge player, co-writing a newspaper column on the card game for the Chicago Tribune.

His grandson, Omar Sharif Jr, posted a picture of himself and the actor on Facebook on 3 July with the message: "I love you."