George Segal

George Segal was born on Long Island, New York, in 1934, and comes from a family of Russian Jewish immigrants – his real name is Bodkin, changed from the even more exotic and longer original Slobodkin – who decided to make the Americas. He was the youngest of four brothers, and from an early age he was captivated by the world of acting – Alan Ladd became his hero when he saw him with a gun in The Raven in 1942 – and the world of music, first playing the ukulele, and then then the banjo.

He had to mourn the death of his father in his teens, which also motivated the move with his mother to New York itself. He had a college education, at Columbia College of that prestigious university, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts. At the same time he was developing his musical skills, and was playing in a jazz band. But after serving in the army, he decided to study acting at the prestigious Lee Strasberg and Utah Hagen Actors Studio, and his talents led him to take part in stage productions on Broadway.

But the cinema and the small screen called him for a long career, like one of his first titles with many actors, the warlike The Longest Day (1962), although his debut, after signing a contract with Columbia, was in Vivir es lo Who Matters (1961). He also appeared in a 1963 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents , “A Nice Touch”, conducting Joseph Pevney .

Segal’s first undisputed success came with Stanley Kramer in 1965, who directed him in Ship of Fools . It was a choral tape, with stars like Vivien Leigh , as it followed the lives of the different passengers aboard the title ship, but its interpretation did not go unnoticed. Not surprisingly, the following year Mike Nichols cast him in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wooolf? , adapted from the play by Edward Albee , with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor ; four of the actors achieved the Oscar nomination and two of them took the statuette, Taylor and Sandy Dennis; the boys, Burton and Segal, had to settle for being among the final five.

From then on, he continued to work at a good pace and on notable titles, such as the war films Lost Command (1966) and The Remagen Bridge (1969) or Roger Corman ‘s gangster The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967). With these dramatic titles and intense action, the turn he gave to comedy at the start of the 70s is striking, where he shone as someone funny in films such as The Kitten and the Owl (1970) -with Barbra Streisand with the which he repeated 25 years later in Love Has Two Faces -, A Red Hot Diamond (1972) -a robbery together with Robert Redford -, A Touch of Distinction(1973) – a film that paired him with an Oscar-winning Glenda Jackson , he had to settle for a Golden Globe; their 1979 meeting, A touch with more class , had a lukewarm reception, instead – and California Split (1974) –here under the orders of Robert Altman . In addition, as he loved the theater, he agreed to shoot versions for television of emblematic works such as “Death of a Salesman” and “Desperate Hours.”

The truth is that Segal showed great versatility. The same was in the adaptation of a science fiction novel by Michael Crichton , The Terminal Man (1974), which combined western and comedy with Goldie Hawn in The Duchess and the Knave (1976), or got on the roller coaster (1977) . of the catastrophic cinema then in fashion, and to which he would return in 2012 (2009) with the specialist Roland Emmerich . And something catastrophic for his career can be described as the decade of the 80s for the actor’s career, which crashed with The Last Couple (1980), where he worked with Natalie Wood , and was replaced in10, the perfect woman byDudley Moore shortly after filming began for unclear reasons. At this time, his marriage to Marion Segal deteriorated, with whom he had two daughters, and which ended in divorce in 1983, after 27 years together. They were hard and self-destructive times, he himself recognized having fallen into the use of drugs. He was happily able to redo himself. He remarried Linda Sue Rogoff, whom he was with until her death in 1996, and then Sonia Schultz Greenbaum, who survives him.

Popularity would return in 1989 with the talking babies of Look Who’s Talking and sequels, alongside John Travolta , again making people laugh, the field with which he was now most identified. But it was no longer the same, Seagal’s star shone less brightly, think that he even made an action movie with the muscular Dolph Lundgren , Deadly Flight (1993). He had to settle for small roles, in 1996 in Flirting with disaster and A crazy person at home . Or agree to join a television series like Give me a break , along with Laura San Giacomo .

Hardworking to the end, he was always available at the age at which others retire. His last title for the cinema, Elsa & Fred (2014), a remake of the Argentinean namesake, where he supported the protagonists Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer . But on television, since that same year he has not stopped being in the friendly sitcom Los Goldbergs .