That's a very M. Ibrahim-like thing to say. What's your next good film going to be?

I made a film for Walt Disney ["Hidalgo," with Viggo Mortensen] which I had a very nice part in, long dialogue scenes. I like to work out how I'm going to speak them and what the rhythm should be and how quick it should go and how slowly. You know, it's fun. Acting is fun. The film doesn't have to terrific, but at least my part has to be interesting, or I have to be interested in playing my part. That's all I need. I can't guarantee that every time I'm going to be able to make a good film.

Do you go through a specific process in order to inhabit a role?

Once I decide to play something, I think about it all the time, even while I'm eating. I try to get the visual image of the character, first of all, a physical sense of him. You know, for instance, with this film, I realized my shoulders are too broad to play an old man, and so I tried first of all to keep them in, like this, and also, I put on some weight down here [stomach] so that I would be more triangular, like a man who sits on a stool all day. So, you've got to work out the physical thing. Once you've got the physical down, then you start behaving like the character. It inspires you to walk in a certain way. And then come to the part where you have the lines and you imagine what kind of person you are: Are you happy or unhappy, young or old? It's a technical thing. It's for acting schools. It's not for you.

Do you still get recognized a lot and treated like a heartthrob wherever you go?

Not like a heartthrob. I'm too old to be a heartthrob, but yes, I get recognized. The only difference between now and before is that a lot of girls come to ask me for autographs and say, "My mother loved you," "My grandmother loves you." But it moves me much more than if a girl asks me for herself. It moves me because mothers move me, grandmothers move me. When you say, "for my mother or my grandmother," it touches me profoundly, because people love their mothers and their grandmothers and they love the people that their mothers and their grandmothers love, so that by proxy, they love me.

How did you hold onto your sense of self through your years in Hollywood?

That is a matter of education, darling. You know, I never changed since I was 10. I am the same person. I never changed my personality in any way, nor what I think of myself. I never thought that I am a genius or that I was important just because I had success. It didn't go to my head in any way. But that is upbringing. I was lucky because in my time, parents didn't divorce. They stayed married all their lives, my parents. My mother was always there when I was eating and when I was doing my homework and she used to put me, when I made mistakes, on the sofa on my tummy and take her slipper off and gave me a little spanking. It didn't hurt so much. It's nice to know that someone is there, caring for you, wanting you to be good, wanting you to improve yourself, to be perfect. My mother helped me to be somebody. She had decided that I had to be somebody.

Were you able to be there in the same way for your son?

Well, you see, I divorced my wife when my son was 8 and a half. And my wife [Egyptian actress Faten Hamama], who was a wonderful woman, was very clever, and as I was leaving Egypt, and she was staying because she is a great actress, she said, "Take your son with you, because you'll be able to give him a better education in Europe and in America than I can give him in Egypt." She sacrificed that. So I lived with my son alone. That's why I never remarried and I never wanted a woman in the house. I never wanted him to have a stepmother like the one from "Cinderella." And of course, he missed the maternal affection. So my son, contrary to me, cannot live without a girl with him, because he didn't have his mother around too much.

Whereas I, who had a tremendously motherly mother, a real Jewish mother type who was always on top of me, am not in need so much. The women that I've liked in my life were never the type that were servile. I like a woman who works and then can come back and talk about what she did all day, what I did. I like independent women. I don't like these women who are always there, always cooking. I can't stand that.

The description you have of the contrast between you and your son is remarkably like the two characters in "Monsieur Ibrahim": Momo, who's desperate for parental love, and M. Ibrahim, who's very satisfied with his lot in life.

Yes. It is like that. And it's beautifully written. If you understood French, the language is beautiful. He's a great writer, that guy [screenwriter Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, who also wrote the book and play on which the film is based]. It was so moving to me, this whole relationship between this lonely, unhappy boy and this lonely old man.

How many languages do you speak?

I speak five languages, but I don't have a mother tongue. I have an accent in all five.

Even in Arabic?

I have an accent. When I used to make Egyptian films, the critics used to say, "He's got a little bit of a foreign accent." But you know, the Egyptian women loved my accent. One of the things the women there loved me for was because I didn't speak the way other Egyptians spoke. I have a softer accent and a softer voice. So what was a defect became a positive quality for me.

You clearly work hard at your craft. Were you ever tempted just to coast on your good looks?

No, I have never done that. In fact, I never look in a mirror, unless I have to shave or something. On sets, I never have the makeup person come and hold the mirror. I never look. I am not interested in my looks. I had good looks, I knew it. It's not that I didn't know it. I knew that when I was young I was very good-looking. There's no way of not knowing it. But that I consider a gift from God, a piece of luck. And I never really understood why -- I mean people who believe in God, believe in this -- why should some people be so favored in life and other people be so not favored? I mean, people who are born poor in Bangladesh or in Rwanda with no food and famines and floods and all sorts of bad things happening in their countries, or they're crippled or they're ugly.

And then you create someone who's handsome, and my parents were wealthy. I always thought it was so unfair because I was born in a country where you saw people who were poor, you saw them dying of hunger. That's why I almost didn't want my beauty, my good looks. I resented the fact that I was so lucky in the middle of unlucky people.

Recent Stories