`I am human. All too bloody human.'

At 19, he joined the Navy, spending 14 months on a submarine depot ship with veteran sailors who had "been bombed, torpedoed and mined. I was just a young kid with them, these hairy, wonderful men." He rethought his life, and afterward he fell in with an artsy crowd and ultimately into theater. "Accidentally, I got involved in a production, a professional production of Turgenev's 'Fathers and Sons,' because the leading man fell over, broke his leg. His name was Luck." He ultimately attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, in a class that included Albert Finney and Alan Bates.

His big cinematic break came when he was cast as Lawrence in 1962's "Lawrence of Arabia." That was the era when filmmakers actually shot hundreds of living people riding through the desert rather than just generating them with the computer. It took two years to make the film. They stationed themselves in Aqaba, Jordan, and then flew out the cameras and crew on a larger plane and then used an "eight-seat De Havilland Dove. We would land on mud flats and set up a tent and shoot. For as long as we could."

On their off days, "Omar Sharif and I, we would vanish to Beirut." He sighs. "In the better days." In those days, Beirut was the glamorous playground of the Middle East. "Beautiful." He says sadly. "Poor Beirut. Poor Lebanon. Poor Middle East."

The pair spent their breaks visiting the "fleshpots as one now calls them." He appears to be referring to brothels. He says that whenever people ask Sharif, a close friend, what he remembers most of the shoot, "he always says fleshpots. But for me it was wonderful. One never was used to that heat and the aridity. The nothingness. It isn't pretty sand; it is just nothing, grit. Flat. And one just never, ever, ever ... you get accustomed to it in a couple of days and then it hits you" -- he smacks his hands. "You would need 16 pints of water per day to stay alive. We all lived on salt pills, which are the worst thing in the world for you. When you get the shakes, somehow you get a pot of water and you put a spoonful of salt in it and stir it. If you can taste the salt you don't need it. If you can't taste the salt you have got about 10 minutes before you dry out and then you start bloating and you are gone."