Aaron Ipale is set to play the mother of all bad guys.

Aharon Ipale spent the Gulf War under fire from Saddam's Scuds in his family's apartment in Jaffa. But this autumn the 42-year old actor will have the chance to exact his own measure of revenge when he portrays the "Butcher of Baghdad" in an independent British feature film called "The Gulf War," starring Gene Hackman as General "Stormin'" Norman Schwartzkopf. Ipale, who lives in Los Angeles and who has already played such unlikely roles as Jesus and a Palestinian terrorist, does not find it so strange that an Israeli should be chosen to portray Saddam. "To tell the truth," he says in a Sunset Strip eatery, "I don't think they could have found an Arab actor who would have felt comfortable with the part." He was born in Morocco, grew up in Jaffa, one of 10 children in a poor immigrant family, and put himself through high school by working on a construction site. Later, serving as an army officer in the infantry, he got his first taste of show business when he met the daughter of Israeli ballerina Yehudit Ornstein, who persuaded her mother to teach him dance gratis. After completing his service, Ipale moved to London, where he studied and worked for eight years, appearing frequently onstage and in BBC productions. His first job after graduating from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in 1973 was the title role in a BBC production, "Christ Recrucified."

"Admittedly, playing Jesus was a problem for me," he says. "I am an observant Jew from an Orthodox family. But it's art - I got over it." He found a more congenial role playing Joshua to Burt Lancaster's Moses in the 1975 CBS-TV production of "Moses the Lawgiver." Another 10 years passed before he acted in his first Hebrew role, as an army officer on the West Bank who falls in love with a Palestinian widow in the Israeli film "On a Narrow Bridge." Ipale moved from London to Hollywood in the early 80s, appearing in supporting roles in such films and TV feature productions as "Ishtar" and "Sadat," as well as in the series "Wiseguy," "MacGyver" and "Miami Vice." Last year he stretched his acting skill once more, for his portrayal of Palestinian master terrorist Hafez Dalqamouni in an acclaimed HBO television docudrama about the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, "The Tragedy of Flight 103: The Inside Story." To research the role he met with Israeli journalist Aharon Barnea, who as a IDF reservist had interrogated Dalqamouni when the Palestinian was captured by Israeli troops during the Lebanon War. "Aharon told me he was a slow-speaking, calculating guy, a nasty piece of work, but extremely bright and self-controlled. I incorporated these traits in my performance. If you make someone inhuman, you can't relate to him as anything but an animal. I don't play animals I play people." Conveying the human side of the mother of all Mideast dictators is clearly a challenge this actor relishes. "I think Saddam is smarter than everyone thinks he is," says Ipale. "Though he's always surrounded by a lot of people, when he presents himself to the world he is very alone, always at arm's length. I think when he is with his family, he can be sympathetic." "The Gulf War" will take some liberties with the facts: In the script, Hussein attends the signing of an Iraqi surrender to coalition troops. But Ipale denies that "The Gulf War" will simply be a rushed-to-the-screen exploitation of recent events. "It's true I was surprised they were doing this film now," he says; "I figured it would take two or three more years. But every movie is exploitation you make a movie and you sell it." Although playing Saddam will give Ipale the biggest exposure of his career, he has no illusions about achieving Hollywood stardom. "Someone told me it was my misfortune to have come to Hollywood in the 1980s rather than in the late 40s or early 50s, when Hollywood knew better how to accommodate actors with foreign accents. Today there are hardly any movies set in foreign countries. "But I take heart from the fact that someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger - not that I'd want to compare us - is now the biggest box office draw in Hollywood."