George Segal, the actor of the films “Virginia Woolf” and “Goldbergs” dies

George Segal, Oscar-nominated actor for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”) Who worked in his old age on the comedy series “The Goldbergs” (“The Goldbergs”) died Tuesday in Santa Rosa, California, his wife said. He was 87 years old.

“The family is devastated to announce that George Segal died this morning due to complications from the bypass operation,” Sonia Segal said in a statement.

George Segal was one of the greatest comedy stars of the 1970s. But his most famous role was in the heartbreaking drama “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” 1966, based on the acclaimed play by Edward Albee.

He was the last surviving member of a small cast nominated for an Academy Award for this work: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton for their lead roles and Sandy Dennis and Segal for their supporting characters. Women won, men did not.

The younger audience certainly knows him as Jack Gallo magazine editor on the NBC series “Just Shoot Me!”, Which he played between 1997-2003, and as grandfather Albert “Pops” Solomon on the ABC series “The Goldbergs” in 2013.

“I lost a legend today. It was truly an honor to be a small part of George Segal’s incredible legacy, “said Adam Goldberg, creator of The Goldbergs, who based his show on his childhood in the 1980s. “Perfect for playing Pops. Like my grandfather, George was a spirit boy with a magic spark.”

In her best years in Hollywood, she played a counselor with Barbra Streisand as a carefree prostitute in 1970’s “Owl and the Pussycat” (“Owl and the Kitten”); an unfaithful husband to Glenda Jackson in 1973’s “A Touch of Class”; a hopeless player alongside Elliot Gould in Robert Altman’s 1974 “California Split”; and a suburban bank robber with Jane Fonda in the 1977 “Fun with Dick and Jane.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWgIOb_U2Hc

Ready to become a filmmaker, his profile has grown steadily since his first film, “Young Doctors,” in 1961. His first starring role was in “King Rat,” a camp of the soulless. Japanese prisoners during World War II.

In “Virginia Woolf,” she played Nick, part of a young couple invited to drinks, who witnessed the bitterness and frustration of a middle-aged couple.

Director Mike Nichols needed someone accepted by star Elizabeth Taylor and turned to Segal when Robert Redford refused. According to Mark Harris, Nichols’ biographer, the director said that Segal is “close enough to the young god he needed for Elizabeth, and witty enough and full of humor to deal with that humiliation.”

Segal died just 10 years after Taylor.

The film brought him to the stars, but in the late ’70s “Jaws” and other action movies changed the nature of Hollywood movies, and Segal’s light-hearted comedies fell out of fashion.

“Then I got a little older,” he said in an interview in 1998. “I started playing urban dads. And that character became a Chevy Chase and after that he was nowhere to be found. “

With the exception of the 1989 hit “Look Who’s Talking,” Segal’s 1980s and 1990s movies didn’t shine. He turned to television and starred in two failed series, “Take Five” and “Murphy’s Law.”

But in 1997 he was successful in David Spade’s comedy “Just Shoot Me!” like Gallo, who, despite his naughty attitude, hires his daughter (Laura San Giacomo) and keeps a useless messenger (Spade) on payroll because he simply cares about them.

Series actor Brian Posehn was one of many who paid tribute to him on Tuesday night.

“I grew up watching him, with his total old-school charm and natural cadence for comedy,” he said. “Making scenes with him was one of the most important moments of my life, but getting to know him a little and making him laugh was even cooler.”

Throughout his long career, Segal played banjo for fun and became a musician quite perfect with the instrument he chose as a child. He played with his own band, the unregistered jazz band from Beverly Hills.

Born in 1934 in Great Neck, New York, Segal, the third son of a beer and malt merchant, began having fun at the age of 8 doing magic tricks for neighboring children. He attended Quaker Boarding School in Pennsylvania and, as a student at Columbia University, arranged Bruno Linch and His Imperial Band, for which he played the banjo.

After graduation, he worked for free at the New York Square Theater Circle, from ticket sales to stand-in roles. She studied acting with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen and made her professional debut in an off-Broadway production of Moliere’s “Don Juan,” which lasted only one night.

After a Broadway role in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” he enlisted in the military. In 1957, when he was discharged, he returned to the stage and began to receive small roles in cinema.

In 1956, Segal married the television story editor Marion Sobel, with whom he had daughters Elizabeth and Polly before divorcing in 1981. He married his second wife, Linda Rogoff, in London in 1982 and became a widower. years later.

Eventually, he reconnected with Sonia Schultz Greenbaum, who had been in love with him 45 years earlier in high school, and a few months later married his third marriage.

“It helped me get through the worst days of my life just by listening to me,” Segal said in 1999. “It was magical.”