Jerry Haleva

Jerry Haleva

Jerry Haleva (born May 26, 1946) is an American actor and political lobbyist. He gained fame as an actor as a doppelgänger of Saddam Hussein due to his physical resemblance to the late Iraqi leader, with all of his film roles having him portraying Hussein.

Jerry Haleva, a Sephardic Jew, is a member of the Republican Party and has worked as a lobbyist for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, among others. In 1973, he was an adviser to a legislative committee investigating prison conditions in California. He served in the California Senate in 1977 as chief of staff for William Campbell.

In 1989, a colleague of Haleva distributed a photo of the then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein among his co-workers with the text "Now we know what Haleva does on his weekends". A few years later, Haleva contacted Ron Smith, who represented doppelgängers in the film industry, and Smith had a small role for Haleva in the feature film Hot Shots! (1991), followed by a more prominent role in its sequel, Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993). Haleva played Hussein in half a dozen films. Besides the Hot Shots! movies and The Big Lebowski, he appeared in a few other films and also appeared in commercials (including for Nintendo).

In the spring of 2003, when Iraq was invaded, he decided to stop working as Hussein's doppelgänger. In January 2004 he came back to this decision and said in an interview that he was interested in continuing his acting career.

As of 2016, he was a contract lobbyist (Sergeant Major Associates) and lived in Sacramento, California.

Movies for Jerry Haleva...

Superhero Movie
Title: Superhero Movie
Character: Saddam Hussein
Released: March 28, 2008
Type: Movie
The team behind Scary Movie takes on the comic book genre in this tale of Rick Riker, a nerdy teen imbued with superpowers by a radioactive dragonfly. And because every hero needs a nemesis, enter Lou Landers, aka the villainously goofy Hourglass.
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Live from Baghdad
Title: Live from Baghdad
Character: Saddam Hussein
Released: December 7, 2002
Type: Movie
A group of CNN reporters wrestle with journalistic ethics and the life-and-death perils of reporting during the Gulf War.A Directors Guild Award-winning movie for director Mick Jackson, starring Michael Keaton and Helena Bonham Carter. In 1990, CNN was a 24-hour news network in search of a 24-hour story. They were about to find it in Baghdad. Veteran CNN producer Robert Wiener and his longtime producing partner Ingrid Formanek find themselves in Iraq on the eve of war. Up against the big three networks, Weiner and his team are rebels with a cause, willing to take risks to get the biggest stories and - unlike their rivals - take them live at a moment's notice. As Baghdad becomes an inevitable US target, one by one the networks pull out of the city until only the crew from CNN remains. With a full-scale war soon to be launched all around them, and CNN ready to broadcast whatever happens 24 hours a day, Wiener and Formanek are about to risk their lives for the story of a lifetime.
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Jane Austen's Mafia!
Title: Jane Austen's Mafia!
Character: Saddam Hussein
Released: July 24, 1998
Type: Movie
Takeoff on the Godfather with the son of a mafia king taking over for his dying father.
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The Big Lebowski
Title: The Big Lebowski
Character: Saddam
Released: March 6, 1998
Type: Movie
Jeffrey 'The Dude' Lebowski, a Los Angeles slacker who only wants to bowl and drink White Russians, is mistaken for another Jeffrey Lebowski, a wheelchair-bound millionaire, and finds himself dragged into a strange series of events involving nihilists, adult film producers, ferrets, errant toes, and large sums of money.
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Hot Shots! Part Deux
Title: Hot Shots! Part Deux
Character: Saddam Hussein
Released: May 21, 1993
Type: Movie
Topper Harley is found to be working as an odd-job-man in a monastery. The CIA want him to lead a rescue mission into Iraq, to rescue the last rescue team, who went in to rescue the last rescue team—who went in to rescue hostages left behind after Desert Storm.
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Hot Shots!
Title: Hot Shots!
Character: Saddam Hussein
Released: July 31, 1991
Type: Movie
The gang that created Airplane and The Naked Gun sets its sights on Top Gun in this often hilarious spoof starring Charlie Sheen, who previously only inspired laughs with his personal life. He plays Topper Harley, a fighter pilot with an ax to grind: clearing the family name. He gets involved in a relationship with Valerie Golino, a woman with an unusually talented stomach. But his mission is to avenge his father. Lloyd Bridges, late in his career, revealed an aptitude for this kind of silliness, here as a commander who is both incredibly dim and delightfully accident prone. Directed by Jim Abrahams, the film makes fun of a variety of other films as well, from Dances with Wolves to The Fabulous Baker Boys. It was so successful that they all returned in the sequel, Hot Shots! Part Deux.