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Omar Sharif went to jail over roulette

While roulette enjoys a reputation for being an elegant game for elegant people and is frequently associated with James Bond movies, not all glamorous persons have behaved elegantly while at the table.

In the early summer of 2003, Omar Sharif, star of "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Doctor Zhivago" gave an interview in which he claimed to have given up gambling ten years previously.

On the night of July 5, 2003, upon losing $30,000 at a roulette table in a casino in the northern Parisian suburb of Enghein-les-Bains, the star and contract bridge specialist, known for his suavity and reserve, began to most vociferously curse the croupier who, alarmed by the violence of the verbal attack, summoned the police.

A policeman arrived; Sharif cursed a blue streak at the officer and then head-butted him. He subsequently spent the night in jail, was fined $1,700 and got a one-month suspended sentence. It seems that at the hearing, he claimed he had no memory of the event; nor did he need memory of it, it had been caught on a closed-circuit television.

In a later interview, Sharif said of his literal run-in with the law "It made me the hero of the whole of France. To head-butt a cop is the dream of every Frenchman."