George Segal
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- This article is about the actor. For the sculptor and painter, see George Segal (artist).
George Segal (born February 13, 1934) is a well-known American film and stage actor who was born in Great Neck, Long Island, New York.
The amiable, wavy-haired leading man is equally at home in drama and comedy, although he is more often seen in the latter. Originally a stage actor and musician, Segal appeared in several nondescript films in the early 1960s before raising eyebrows in 1965 as a distraught newlywed in Ship of Fools and as a P.O.W. in King Rat. He followed with top performances as Nick in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (for which he was Oscar-nominated), a Cagneyesque gangster in The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, a perplexed police detective Mo Brummel in No Way to Treat a Lady, a bookworm in The Owl and the Pussycat, and in a pair of impressive dramatic performances, a man laying waste to his marriage in Loving and a hairdresser turned junkie in Born to Win.
He played an inept burglar in the 1972 comedy The Hot Rock with Robert Redford, a comically unfaithful husband in A Touch of Class and a midlife crisis victim in Blume in Love. He co-starred with Jane Fonda as suburbanite-turned-bank-robbers in Fun With Dick and Jane, and starred as a faux gourmet in Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?.
Segal was so appealing that too often he was asked to carry a film on his charm alone, especially in the 1970s. He was relatively inactive in the 1980s, but bounced back as the sleazy father of Kirstie Alley's baby in Look Who's Talking, and in the 1993 sequel Look Who's Talking Now, and as the left-wing comedy writer in For the Boys (1991).
He has since starred in the long-running television comedy series Just Shoot Me as the head of the wacky fashion and style magazine "Blush".
He is also an accomplished banjo player.