MY LIFE IN 10 PICTURES
Take a look back at multitalented George Segal’s rewarding Hollywood career.
“I can’t afford to have any regret. I’ve been too lucky!”
— George
AS A KID in Great Neck, N.Y., George Segal did a magic act at birthday parties. “I was an extremely shy little boy, but when I got on the stage, I just felt free, because I [was] not me anymore,” he said. He gained fame for authentically playing the everyman, from nebbishes to romantic leads, often with brilliant comic timing. “I always try to find the humor and irony in whatever character I am playing,” says George, who turns 84 on Feb. 13. It’s a skill that’s kept him acting for nearly six decades. He’s also been a devoted dad to his daughters, Elizabeth and Polly. “I’m not much for reflection, but I got to live this long and I’m still acting,” George says. “So I
consider myself blessed and thankful that I am still here.” 1965 KING FOR A DAY
1 After his Golden Globe– winning debut in The New Interns, he had a breakout role in King Rat. “It brought my game up to work with all those British actors” like James Fox (center).
1966 LOVE & WAR He almost didn’t get his Oscarnominated role as the guest of a bickering couple (Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor) in the dark comedy Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? “Robert Redford, [the director’s] first choice, thought the part was too unpleasant.”
1977 FUN TIMES “You can usually tell in the first or second page whether [a] script is going to be for you,” George says. So he quickly knew that the recession-era robbery comedy Fun With Dick and Jane (with Jane Fonda) “was a very good script.” 1996 MOORE THE MERRIER “I’m proud to be in that movie,” he says of the comedy Flirting With Disaster, in which he plays a man whose adopted son searches for his parents. He loved working with on-screen wife Mary Tyler Moore. “She was a great trouper and a great comedienne,” he says.
1970 TRICK OR TREAT Barbra Streisand had George cast in the rom-com The Owl and the Pussycat. “I played a failed novelist and Barbra played a failed hooker. I still don’t know which one is more improbable,” he jokes.
1984 GOOD PICK George made it to Carnegie Hall in 1981 as banjo player of the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band. “All my life I dreamed of performing [there]. A magical feeling swept over me: The smiles from the crowd, the aura of the hall — it lifted me. There’s no thrill like being live onstage.”
2001 JUST IN TIME Acting on the hit sitcom Just Shoot Me! with Wendie Malick, David Spade, Enrico Colantoni and Laura San Giacomo “was just fun all the time. That was a loving family, where everyone [had] each other’s back,” he’s said. “That’s a wonderfully supportive feeling to have. That’s why we all love each other, and why we still meet for lunch a couple or three times a year.”
1973 REEL AFFECTION How did George so convincingly fall in love with Glenda Jackson in A Touch of Class, and his other early ’70s rom-com co-stars? “That’s because I fell for all of them. And I think they fell for me a bit, too. You find yourselves flirting, holding hands, feeling that feeling.”
1989 BABY TALK He played a man whose affair with an accountant (Kirstie Alley) produces a verbose baby in Look Who’s Talking. “I’d like to make [the follow-up be] like Kramer vs. Kramer,” George said, but he didn’t return to the series until the second sequel in 1993. 2018 DEAR OLD GRANDDAD He “laughed out loud” when he read his “irascible, loving, slightly demented” grandpa role in The Goldbergs. “I [hadn’t] done that since I read the pilot of Just Shoot Me. My family was much more Victorian than this, so all the yelling and screaming [is] really moving and funny.”