One of the most famous love affairs that caused huge global controversy was that of the late Egyptian heartthrob, Omar Sharif, and the Jewish beauty Barbra Streisand. This affair was extra scandalous because of their different backgrounds, as well as the timing.
Although they were both married when they met, they fell into an affair which lasted for the duration of filming on the movie ‘Funny Girl’. Coincidentally, the time of filming was the same as the Egyptian-Israeli Six-Day War in 1967. The Egyptian government almost revoked Sharif’s citizenship when a poster of the two stars kissing came out to the public after the war, since Streisand was known to be a vocal supporter of Israel.
While we were rehearsing ‘Funny Girl, it so happened that the Six-Day War began, and the Arab press called me a traitor because she is Jewish and a photograph had been published of us kissing. I told them neither in my professional nor private life do I ask a girl her nationality or religion when I kiss her.
Sharif, in an interview with The New York Times
The couple worked together years later again in ‘Funny Lady’, in 1975.
Here are two of our favorite scenes of both of them together!
