page_title: George Segal
section_title: Early roles and success
hierarchical_section_title: George Segal / Career / Early roles and success
caption_attribution_description: Screenshot of George Segal from the trailer for the film Lost Command
context_page_description: George Segal is an American actor and musician. Segal became popular in the 1960s and 1970s for playing both dramatic and comedic roles. Some of his most acclaimed roles are in films such as Ship of Fools, King Rat, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Where's Poppa?, The Hot Rock, Blume in Love, A Touch of Class, California Split, For the Boys, and Flirting with Disaster. He was one of the first American film actors to rise to leading man status with an unchanged Jewish surname—thus helping pave the way for artists such as Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand.
  He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and has won two Golden Globe Awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance in A Touch of Class.
  On television, he is best known for his roles as Jack Gallo on Just Shoot Me! and as Albert "Pops" Solomon on The Goldbergs.
  Segal is also an accomplished banjo player. He has released three albums and has also performed the instrument in several of his acting roles and on late night television.
context_section_description: After college and the army, Segal eventually studied at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen and got a job as an understudy in a Broadway production of The Iceman Cometh.  He appeared in Antony and Cleopatra for Joseph Papp and joined an improvisational group called The Premise, which performed at a Bleecker Street coffeehouse and whose ranks included Buck Henry and Theodore J. Flicker. Segal continued to perform on Broadway with roles in Gideon (1961–62) by Paddy Chayefsky which ran for 236 performances, as well as Rattle of a Simple Man (1963), an adaptation of a British hit, with Tammy Grimes and Edward Woodward.
  He was signed to a Columbia Pictures contract in 1961, making his film debut in The Young Doctors. Segal made several early television appearances in the early 1960s, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Armstrong Circle Theatre and Naked City and appeared in the well-known World War II film The Longest Day (1962). He also had a small role in Act One (1963) and a more prominent part in the western Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964), alongside Yul Brynner.
  Segal came West to Hollywood from New York to star in a TV series with Robert Taylor that never aired. Nonetheless, he joined the cast of Columbia Pictures' medical drama The New Interns (1964) and the studio then put him under long-term contract. The role ultimately earned him the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year, alongside Harve Presnell and Chaim Topol.
caption: Segal in the trailer for Lost Command
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