CAIRO — In "Lawrence of Arabia," Omar Sharif first emerges as speck in distance in the shimmering desert sand. He draws closer, a black-robed figure on a trotting camel, until he finally dismounts, pulling aside his scarf to reveal his dark eyes and a disarming smile framed by his thin mustache.

The Egyptian-born actor's Hollywood debut immediately enshrined him as a smoldering leading man of the 1960s, transcending nationality.

Sharif died of a heart attack in a Cairo hospital on Friday at the age of 83, his London-based agent Steve Kenis and close friends said.

When director David Lean cast him in 1962's "Lawrence of Arabia," Sharif was already the biggest heartthrob in his homeland, where he played brooding, romantic heroes in multiple films in the 1950s — and was married to Egyptian cinema's reigning screen beauty. But he was a virtual unknown elsewhere.

He wasn't Lean's first choice to play Sherif Ali, the tribal leader with whom Peter O'Toole's T.E. Lawrence teams up to help lead the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Lean had hired another actor but dropped him because his eyes weren't the right color. The film's producer, Sam Spiegel, went to Cairo to search for a replacement and found Sharif. After passing a screen test that proved he was fluent in English, he got the job.