Career
He had worked in 4 Bollywood films before migrating to Pakistan. Kamal was a popular film star of in the 1960s and the 1970s. Kamal, whose film Tauba (1963) became a success at the box office, has a striking resemblance to the Indian filmstar Raj Kapoor, and he is not evasive about this issue.
He once said, "People used to mistake me for Raj Kapoor while I was in Bombay and he enjoyed it".
In fact, according to Pakistani script writer Ali Sufyan Afaqi, Kamal used to practice Raj Kapoor"s scenes in front of a mirror. Kamal"s first appearance in his Pakistani movie by producer Shabab Keranvi Thandi Sarak (1957) was meant to resemble Raj Kapoor.
After retirement from films, he began acting in Pakistan Television dramas at fairly advanced age. His most notable television appearance is in hit television drama Kashkol in which he played a wealthy businessman whose son (played by his real life son, Ghalib Kamal) becomes addicted to heroin.
Syed Kamal died on October 1, 2009 at Karachi after a lingering illness at age 75.