Yigal Naor

Isreali-born character actor Yigal Naor (aka Igal Naor) is of Iraqi ancestry, a genetic legacy providing him with the thick, dark-eyebrowed physical appearance that has made him popular casting for numerous Middle Eastern roles, among the best known of which is his portrayal of Saddam Hussein in the 2008 mini-series "House of Saddam." Naor made his debut in 1987 with a supporting part in the Israeli- and American-produced drama "Witness in the War Zone," which starred Christopher Walken. With the exception of his appearance in the 1993 horror "The Mummy Lives," most of Naor's roles over the next decade and a half were limited to Israeli film and television. His big break, if a mixed blessing in terms of typecasting, came in 2005, when Steven Spielberg cast him as a terrorist in his epic bio-drama "Munich," a role that gave Naor great exposure and led to subsequent big-ticket projects. In 2007, he landed a meaty role in the CIA-thriller "Rendition," where he lead an underground prison, and in 2010 he played the even more substantial supporting part of General Al Rawi, a figure more loosely comparable to Saddam Hussein, in Paul Greengrass' Iraq War thriller starring Matt Damon, "Green Zone." Thanks to the U.K., where he has increasingly earned work in film and TV, Naor found a little comic relief from all the war- and terror-related content, to some extent, when he played a Muslim cleric in the 2010 British comedy "The Infidel."