George Segal, one of the first of a new breed of Jewish actors who embraced their identity but were casual about it, died at the age of 87 on Tuesday in California. The cause of death was complications following bypass surgery, his wife, Sonia Segal, said in an announcement.
A breakout star in the quirkier, more independent American cinema that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, he worked with such directors as Mike Nichols, Paul Mazursky, Robert Altman and Carl Reiner. At home in both comedy and drama, he often appeared in light comedies as well as more demanding and artistic films.
Segal, who was born in New York City and raised in Great Neck, Long Island, to a Jewish family, excelled at playing ruggedly handsome, confident-bordering-on-arrogant guys, who were often trying to beat the system. Sometimes he portrayed characters who were clearly Jewish, as he did in one of his early roles as an intellectual in Sidney Lumet’s 1968 film, Bye Bye Braverman. Other times, he was simply an American, as he was when he played Biff in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in a television production in 1966 or in a television remake of The Desperate Hours, where he played a convict holding a family hostage portrayed by Humphrey Bogart in the original.
His breakout role was as a young academic caught in the crossfire between a feuding older couple played by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Mike Nichols’ adaptation of the Edward Albee play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , for which he received his first and only Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor in 1966.
He went on to star in Paul Mazursky’s offbeat 1973 drama, Blume in Love, as a man who falls apart when his wife leaves him, and Robert Altman’s acclaimed story of two gamblers, California Split, in 1974, with Elliott Gould
He also appeared in many mainstream comedies and caper films, such as A Touch of Class, alongside Glenda Jackson, in which he played a man who falls in love during what he intended to be a casual affair; The Hot Rock, about a diamond heist, which also starred Robert Redford; Herbert Ross’s The Owl and The Pussycat, playing a guy who gets romantically involved with a prostitute, who was played by Barbra Streisand; and Carl Reiner’s Where’s Poppa?, a black comedy with Ruth Gordon about a man who tries to get rid of his overbearing mother.
His career slowed down in the 1980s and 1990s, but he still had some memorable roles during those decades, notably in David O. Russell’s ensemble comedy, Flirting with Disaster. Eventually he transitioned into working mostly in television, appearing as the publisher of a fashion magazine in Just Shoot Me!, and the grandfather in the sitcom, The Goldbergs.
As he became a star, he resisted pressure to change his name to something less Jewish and get his nose fixed, telling The New York Times: “I didn’t change my name because I don’t think George Segal is an unwieldy name. It’s a Jewish name, but not unwieldy. Nor do I think my nose is unwieldy. I think a nose job is unwieldy. I can always spot ‘em. Having a nose job says more about a person than not having one. You always wonder what that person would be like without a nose job.”