Omar See Net Worth

Biography of Omar Sy

Omar Sy is a French actor and comedian. The popularity of Omar Sy brought roles in the films “1 + 1” (2011), “X-Men: Days of Future Past” (2014), “Jurassic World” (2015), “2 + 1” (2016), “Chocolate” ( 2016), etc. His rich biography can serve as another example of the fact that difficult life circumstances cannot break a person on the way to a dream.

Childhood and youth

Omar Sy was born on January 20, 1978 in north-central France, in a place called Trap. Omar is the fourth of eight children in a family of immigrants from West Africa. The actor’s mother, a native of Mauritania, worked as a cleaner, and his father, a native of Senegal, worked in a factory. Both Xi’s parents come from the Fulbe people.

Omar’s father arrived in France in 1962, planning to save money to return to Senegal and set up shop there. As a result, he stayed in France and got a job at a car factory. His wife moved in with him in 1974.

Omar studied well at school, although he often had behavioral problems. By the way, Xi’s classmate was the future French footballer Nicolas Anelka.

Xi’s childhood years were spent in a poor suburb – his parents did not have money to take their children to the cinema and theaters, but the boy was always interested in this area, had a lively mind and loved to make friends laugh. C ended up dropping out of high school to become a comedian.

My parents thought I was crazy. For them, the job was hard work. It was difficult for them to understand that work can be both fun and pleasure.

Career

In 1996, Omar Sy got a job as a comedian at Radio Nova – it was there that he met his future comedy partner and good friend Frederic Testa (later he starred in the popular French films Sea, Sun and No Sex, Depression and Friends, etc.) .

A fruitful joint work led friends to the show “Le Cinéma de Jamel” with the famous French comedian of Moroccan origin Jamel Debbuz (Nomernabis in “Asterix and Obelix: The Mission of Cleopatra”). Interestingly, Debbuz grew up in the same area as Omar and was the best friend of his older brother.

A successful collaboration allowed Omar and Fred to establish their own Visiophon column, regularly participate in a number of other shows on Canal + and even launch their own sketch show Omar and Fred, which was a success.

Little by little, Omar starred in French cinema – at first in very small roles, and closer to the mid-2000s in larger ones. It could be seen, for example, in the comedies The Box (2004), Summer Camp (2006) and others.

An important step in C’s career was an invitation to Los Angeles, where he voiced the hacker Zip for the French version of the Tomb Raider Legend video game. Fortunately, by that time, Xi already had experience in voice acting and dubbing in his homeland.

One of the first widely known films outside of France, in which Omar starred, was the comedy We Are Legends (2008) with Ramzi Bedia and Eric Judor.

But the real breakthrough in the career of an actor was the main role in the dramatic comedy “1 + 1” (2011, in the original “The Untouchables”). In the film, Xi played an immigrant and former prisoner who takes a job with a disabled millionaire, which radically changes his attitude to life.

The picture became the best-selling French film of all time at the local box office and received the highest ratings from critics and audiences. As a result, Omar Sy was in the top three favorites of the French public, losing only to tennis player Yannick Noah and football player Zinedine Zidane. Tellingly, in 2016 he took the first line in this rating, although 4 years have passed since the release of “1 + 1”.

The role in the touching comedy brought Omar the prestigious Globe de Cristal Award and a nomination for the Satellite Award for Best Actor. Did not remain without praise and awards and his colleague on the set, Francois Cluzet, who played a millionaire. Omar says that he began to consider himself an actor only after “1 + 1”. “I was a comedian. And this is different,” Xi admits.

After the release of the film, Omar’s career went up steeply, and the actor was immediately inundated with interesting offers. In France, he starred, as they say, tirelessly – and almost always in the lead roles: “Dream Team” (2012), “Special Agents on Vacation” (2012), “Jokes aside” (2012), etc. On the set of Xi got acquainted with the most famous actors of the country – Audrey Tautou, Romain Duris, Gad Elmaleh.

But soon Omar decided to move to Hollywood. The move was not easy – despite the success in his homeland, in the USA he had to start all over again. In addition, the actor had to seriously work on his English.

All efforts were crowned with success. In 2013, Omar landed a role in a film that was destined for success. In Bryan Singer’s superhero action movie X-Men: Days of Future Past, Xi played Lucas Bishop, a mutant from the future who can absorb most forms of energy. Omar next starred with James Franco and Kate Hudson in Danish director Henrik Ruben Gentz’s thriller The Good People (2014).

However, Omar did not forget about France. The same year saw the release of the drama Samba, in which Xi played an unemployed Senegalese immigrant who enters into a strange relationship with a world-weary businesswoman, Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg). “We wanted to introduce immigrants to people,” says the actor. “We talk about immigrants all the time, but we don’t know them.” The film was directed by 1+1 creators Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano.

In 2015, C landed a role in another big Hollywood project, Jurassic World, which confidently took its place at the top of the list of highest-grossing films in the history of cinema. And although the main role in the film went to Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, the role of Omar did not go unnoticed. And just a year later, Ron Howard’s box-office film Inferno, based on the novel of the same name by Dan Brown, was released on the big screens, in which the actor played agent Christophe Bouchard.

Meanwhile in France, Xi starred in the touching film 2+1 (not related to 1+1 in any way, this is a trick of the Russian distributors) and Roshdi Zem’s biographical drama Chocolate. For the role of a clown who is trying to do something new in the history of the circus, Omar has received several prestigious awards. In addition, on the set of the film, the actor was lucky to work as James Tierre, the grandson of Charlie Chaplin.

In 2017, Rodimus Prime spoke as the voice of Omar in Michael Bay’s Transformers: The Last Knight. The actor also starred in the French tragicomedy The Dr. Knock Affair, in which he appeared as a former pickpocket and incorrigible adventurer.

Personal life of Omar Sy

On July 5, 2007, Omar Sy married a girl named Helen, whom he had dated for 10 years before. Helen gave birth to Xi five children. Omar’s wife, the daughter of a social worker and realtor, was once going to become a speech therapist. In Paris, where she went to study in her youth, she met Omar. As a result, before the birth of her first child at 24, Helen worked in the music field, and now she heads the CéKeDuBonheur Foundation, which specializes in helping sick children.

Omar Sy is a Muslim.

Omar Sy now

Today Omar Sy is one of the most sought-after French actors, both at home and abroad. In 2018, he worked on the following films: the French films The Cop from Belleville and The Song of the Wolf, the American film The Call of the Wild with Harrison Ford (based on the story of the same name by Jack London), the family tape of the French director Michel Hazanavicius The Lost Prince and the drama “Rabbi’s Cat” with Christian Clavier.

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