“He hated them”: the star who called himself one of the only actors David Lean actually liked
It goes without saying that the best directors tend to bring the best performances out of the best actors, a statement that was applicable to the entire filmography of David Lean, even though he largely couldn’t stand thespians in general.
He did name Katharine Hepburn as his favourite performer that he’d ever directed, though, which was par for the course when the four-time Academy Award winner in the ‘Best Actress’ category was about as talented and professional as the industry has ever seen.
Despite his indifference towards those who recited their dialogue under the watchful eye of the masterful filmmaker, he gained a habit of steering them right into the thick of the awards season race. Of course, just because he didn’t like actors, it didn’t mean he had no idea what to do with them, something proven irrevocably true through nothing but the facts.
Celia Johnson earned a ‘Best Actress’ nod at the Oscars for Brief Encounter. Ralph Richardson won a ‘Best British Actor’ prize at the Baftas for The Sound Barrier. Co-stars Nigel Patrick and Ann Todd were nominated at the same ceremony for the same film, while the aforementioned Hepburn was in the running for ‘Best Actress’ for Summertime, and Alec Guinness won ‘Best Actor’ for The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Sessue Hayakawa made the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for the war epic, Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif were nominated in lead and supporting categories for Lawrence of Arabia, and Tom Courtenay made the cut in the latter race for Doctor Zhivago, with John Mills emerging victorious for lending support in Ryan’s Daughter, a film for which Sarah Miles earned recognition for ‘Best Actress’.
In total, Lean directed 11 Oscar-nominated performances, with three of them winning. And yet, Lawrence of Arabia alumni Sharif revealed his disdain for the craft. “Look, he hated actors, I’ll tell you that,” he explained to The Guardian. “He was interested in the film itself. His work was about making the film. He took actors, he didn’t like them or love them or anything, he just thought, ‘This one will do for this part.'”
Putting himself in very rare company, Sharif referred to himself as “one of the only actors he actually liked in all his life,” reiterating his point by once again stating that “he hated them”. The Egyptian-born star earned Lean’s respect and admiration because he ticked exactly the boxes he was looking for during the Lawrence of Arabia casting process.
He was a performer of Arab descent, he spoke English, and he was an experienced actor. A perfect storm, then, Sharif recalled how “he called me, and I went to the desert, and he loved me,” something Lean didn’t say an awful lot about his on-camera collaborators.
