21st April 2016

Omar Sharif – actor and prolific bridge player

The globally acclaimed actor Omar Sharif, who acted in films like Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Mackenna’s Gold (1969), was quite a prolific bridge player. Omar Sharif was attracted to the card game of bridge when he was 21 years old. In 1964, he was the captain of the United Arab Republic team at the World Bridge Olympiad. With an aim to promote bridge, he formed the Omar Sharif Bridge Circus in 1968, which extensively toured America and Canada. He quit bridge in 2000.

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16th March 2016

What’s in a name? – ‘Benaam’

In the Hindi film Benaam, the name of the character played by Amitabh Bachchan was ‘Amit Srivastava’, which is his real name. ‘Bachchan’ was the title taken by his father, Harivansh Rai, and Srivastava is their original family surname.

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14th March 2016

Steve McQueen’s distressed childhood

Terence Steven McQueen was a famous Hollywood actor and director known for the famous films such as Magnificent Seven and Towering Inferno. He had a horrible childhood. Steve McQueen was dyslexic, partially deaf as a result of childhood ear infection and he was the son of an allegedly rebellious alcoholic lady of questionable character. His father abandoned his mother after six months of meeting. He was just a baby, when his mother left him with her parents and maternal uncle. When he was eight years old, he was taken home by his mother who had married a second time. His stepfather was abusive and used to beat him so much that he left home at the age of nine and lived on the streets. He had become a petty criminal. He was sent again to his mother’s maternal uncle but called back again when she remarried a third time. His new stepfather was also abusive. McQueen started stealing and abusing drugs and was put into a remand home.

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