“I am a human being, living out of all prejudice and going to the unknown,” Ms. Suleiman said. “I belong to humanity. My first and my second husbands are Sunni. I do not belong to any religion. These classifications are out of date.

“When the revolution broke out, I realized that I was a Syrian, and that my role was to guide people so as not to let them be dragged to death.”

She said at the time that she was joining rallies and making other public appearances to protest the state’s influence over Syrian cultural institutions and to counter Mr. Assad’s attempts to demonize the antigovernment demonstrators. She was joined at a number of protests by Abdul Baset al-Sarout, a Syrian soccer star.

“I just wanted to go just to say we Syrians are one people,” Ms. Suleiman told Al Jazeera. “I wanted to contradict the narrative of the regime and show people that there is no sectarianism in Syria. I wanted it to stop its lie that those who protest are armed groups, foreign agents or radical Islamists.”

Most sources said that Ms. Suleiman was born on May 17, 1970, in the northern city of Aleppo.

After moving to Damascus, she graduated from the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts and acted in numerous plays. She also appeared on Syrian television shows including “The Diary of Abou Antar,” “Little Ladies” and “Small Hearts.”

Peter Harling, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, an organization in Brussels whose goal is to prevent deadly conflicts, was quoted by The Financial Times in 2012 as praising Ms. Suleiman’s role in preventing even worse violence in Homs, the city in western Syria that endured indiscriminate bombardment by government forces and was one of the first to hold large demonstrations against Mr. al-Assad in 2011.