Yakov Naumovich Pokhis (Яков Наумович Похис), better known as Yakov Smirnoff, is a Ukrainian-born American comedian and painter. He was popular with American audiences in the 1980s for comedy performances in which he used irony and word play to contrast life under the Communist regime in his native Soviet Union with life in the United States, delivered in heavily accented English.
Former roommate of comedian Andrew Dice Clay
Became a U.S. citizen on July 4, 1986.
Lives and works in Branson, Missouri.
He was an art professor at Odessa Pedagogical University in Ukraine before starting his comedy career in the United States, and he remains a talented artist.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade centers, he began working on a mural to commemorate the event. Just in time for the first anniversary of the event, the mural was printed on a huge banner, with the quote "The human spirit is not measured by the size of the act, but by the size of the heart." It was hung from a nearby building where it was clearly visible from Ground Zero for over a year. Yakov financed the banner with $100,000 of his own money, but kept his donation anonymous, for fear that people would see it as a joke because of his reputation as a comedian.
