Rassim al-Jumaili

Who was Rassim al-Jumaili?

Rassim al-Jumaili was a well known Iraqi comedian and actor.

He was born in 1938 in a poor neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq. He attended and graduated from Baghdad's College of Fine Arts in 1964. Al-Jumaili joined the Iraq military following his graduation as an officer. He became an active member of the military theater while in the service. His first break in the Iraqi entertainment industry by performing in theater stage productions in Baghdad in the early 1980s.

Al-Jumaili and his family fled to Syria in 2003 following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, joining the dozens of other Iraqi actors and comedians who also fled the violence that was sweeping Iraq in the years following the invasion. Al-Jumaili's last role was in "The Leader" series, which was focused on the daily suffering of ordinary Iraqis. Al-Jumaili played a sarcastic dictator in the play, believed to be a parody of Iraqi's post-Saddam Hussein administration. It was widely seen during the month of Ramadan in 2007.

Rassim al-Jumaili died of kidney failure at Younes Hospital in the Al-Hajar Al-Asswad quarter 10 km south of Damascus, Syria, on December 1, 2007, at the age of 69.