George Segal, actor who forged a lucrative career as a genial comic star of 1970s Hollywood movies – obituary

George Segal, who has died aged 87, became Hollywood’s favourite light comedy actor playing urbane middle-class lovers in such films as The Owl and the Pussycat (1970) and A Touch Of Class (1973), but no sooner had he been acclaimed “the next Humphrey Bogart” or “the new Cary Grant” than his cinema career flatlined and he moved to television in sitcoms that usually failed to cross the Atlantic.

He first came to notice as a serious actor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) playing the biologist Nick opposite the battling lovebirds Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in a performance that earned him not only favourable reviews but also an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.

Segal failed to maintain momentum in straight dramatic roles, however, and his next few films proved underwhelming: Michael Anderson’s The Quiller Memorandum (1966) was a spy thriller in the low-key style of The Ipcress File, but despite a cast of spies that included Alec Guinness and Max von Sydow it was poorly received, the first of several further mediocre screen releases. “Competent and personable” was the American critic Pauline Kael’s verdict on Segal.

His career took a turn for the better, however, when he was cast as the buttoned-up aspiring writer Felix seduced by his neighbour, the foul-mouthed prostitute Dolores (Barbra Streisand) in the romantic comedy The Owl and the Pussycat (1970).

Demonstrating a temperamental affinity with Streisand (in a rare non-singing role), Segal traded urbane humour with his co-star with such energy that this time Pauline Kael rated it “probably the most enjoyable comedy since M*A*S*H”, which had been released a few months before.

Three years later the same vibe thrummed through Melvin Frank's A Touch Of Class, in which Segal, as a married American insurance executive, and Glenda Jackson, a British divorcee, embark on an affair when they collide in a London park.

Although there were flashes of pure farce – his character slipped a disc leaping into bed with her – Segal’s strong chemistry with his leading lady shone throughout. “Not as subtle a comedian as Jack Lemmon, he nevertheless gives considerable charm and sympathy to his role here as the tormented male,” observed The Spectator. The film earned Glenda Jackson an Oscar for best actress, and one columnist proposed Segal as the new Cary Grant.

Together these rom-coms, as they would now be termed, should have signalled Segal’s lift-off into Hollywood stardom, but he made too many unwise choices about subsequent film roles – and one monumental mistake in turning down the lead in the comedy 10, for which he had been first pick. Some suggested that Segal felt the script favoured the beautiful 22-year-old Bo Derek’s character over his own.

He and the director Blake Edwards sued each other, and later settled out of court. And the role went on to make Dudley Moore an international film star.

The son of a Jewish hop dealer, George Segal was born on February 13 1934 in Great Neck, Long Island, and attended the Quaker co-educational George School in Newtown, Pennsylvania, followed by Haverford College. At Columbia University he played banjo in a seven-man Dixieland jazz band under the name Bruno Lynch, neglecting his studies and wandering around Greenwich Village thinking of ways to make money.

When his brother introduced him to the director of an off-Broadway theatre, Segal was given a succession of jobs – as usher, soft drinks salesman, ticket-taker and janitor. “Cleaning urinals was as a close as I got to the smell of greasepaint,” he recalled. His first professional stage appearance was in Molière’s Don Juan with Peter Falk, which closed after one night.

As a Broadway understudy in 1956 he took over the lead role in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, but was then drafted into the US Army, based on Staten Island. On his discharge he was seen in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Antony and Cleopatra, featured in a Broadway revival of the musical Leave It To Jane, formed a nightclub singing act and appeared in an improvisational revue, where he was seen by a producer from Columbia Pictures.

His first substantial film role was in The Young Doctors (1961) starring Ben Gazzara, followed by turns in Ship of Fools and the title role in King Rat, a wartime drama with a mostly British cast. While cementing his reputation as a serious actor in television adaptations of Broadway plays, Segal spent his free time fronting the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band with his banjo and making several records.

Moving to California, he signed a seven-year contract with Columbia and after an featured role in 1964 with Yul Brynner in Invitation to a Gunfighter was rewarded with his own fan club, one of the last of the studio packaged stars.

Critical and popular success in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? led indirectly to his career turn towards comedy. Television talk shows were trawling for dirt on Burton and Taylor, then Hollywood’s golden couple, and booked Segal to dish it up, but when he took along his banjo and played it, directors realised his comic potential.

While a spate of notable films followed, starting in 1970 with The Owl and the Pussycat and the subversive comedy Where’s Poppa? , Segal fell short of superstar status. At the height of his career in the middle of that decade he was commanding a seven-figure salary, largely on the strength of his starring role in A Touch of Class, but most of his other films of the period were in one way or another unsatisfactory, and showed him best suited to co-star rather than leading man roles.

Peter Yates’s gem heist caper The Hot Rock, for example, in which Segal appeared with Robert Redford, got mixed reviews in 1972 and failed to set the box office alight. Fun with Dick and Jane five years later, this time with Segal opposite Jane Fonda, was a moderate hit with audiences, but disappointed critics. And in 1979 he dropped out of 10 four days before filming was scheduled to start.

The 1980s proved to be Segal’s wilderness years. As the parts dried up, he turned to a psychiatrist “to keep in touch with myself”, dabbled in drugs and became addicted to cocaine. “You need to adopt a certain lifestyle that is built into the Hollywood circus,” he told the Telegraph. “Actors are overpaid, prices are mind-boggling and so are the cars in the garage. That’s all part of the game, to keep the artificial economy and dream factory going.

“It looks like something to envy, but it ain’t.”

In the 1990s he contributed cameos to films including The Cable Guy in 1996. But he enjoyed a comeback on American television with a starring role as Jack Gallo in the comedy series Just Shoot Me! “I have a dread of being considered bland,” he said, “but I’ve had to reconcile myself to the fact that that’s what I am.”

Most recently, when he was in his eighties, he gained a new audience played the sparky grandfather “Pops” in The Goldbergs, a family sitcom set during the 1980s.

George Segal was thrice married. He married first, in 1956, Marion Sobel, whom he had met at college, and with whom he had two daughters. The couple divorced in 1983, and later that year he married Linda Rogoff in a London synagogue. Shortly after her death in 1996 he married his high school sweetheart Sonia Schultz Greenbaum, who survives him with the children of his first marriage.

George Segal, born February 13 1934, died March 23 2021