When 94-year-old Kirk Douglas held the stage at last Sunday night's Academy Awards telecast -kibitzing before he presented the Oscar to best supporting actress winner Melissa Leo, flirting with her later -there was another showbiz drama happening right beside him.

That tall young man in a tuxedo who delivered the Oscar to Douglas, then had a mock fight over his cane, was Omar Sharif Jr., part of another legendary Hollywood family.

Sharif, 27, ("in Hollywood I say 22 or 25 -I'm learning quick") was raised in Montreal, home city of his mother, and educated both there and in the Middle East. He moved to Egypt to become an actor -he was in a movie and a TV series there -and left just before the recent uprising to try his luck in Hollywood, just four months ago.

What a way to break in!  Monday morning publications around the world buzzed  and he was crowned as "the hot guy battling Kirk Douglas for his cane".

"I said, 'It's now or never,'" he recalled. He called his grandfather, who's now 79, on the road. "He said, 'Look, I gave you my name and I gave you my good looks; there's nothing else I'm going to give you. You do the rest on your own.' I admire him for that."

Sharif said he was struggling until he got a call out of the blue from Bruce Vilanch, a longtime writer of the Academy Awards show. He met Douglas a few days before the ceremony. And the rest, is history!

The ADVOCATE wasted no time snagging him for an interview . Omar Jr revealed, "I certainly like fashion. I’m so grateful to Calvin Klein collection for giving me the tuxedo and having me wear it on stage. And actually now, they’re letting me keep it. They said I represented them well. Two days before the show, I didn’t have a tuxedo. The one wardrobe gave me for the show was a complete disaster. A contact called the people at Calvin Klein and they Fed-Exed one over night. Otherwise I would have been on the stage in my underwear, which may have interested some but I don’t think the Academy would have appreciated it!'

Insiders tell me that we will be seeing A LOT of this young hottie in 2011.  He is about to EXPLODE with success here in the US! 

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