– Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? And ‘Goldbergs’ star George Segal dead at 87

LOS ANGELES (AP) – George Segal, the banjo player who became an Oscar nominated actor for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” From 1966 and worked until the age of 80 on ABC’s sitcom “The Goldbergs”, he died Tuesday in Santa Rosa, California, said his wife.

“The family is devastated to announce that George Segal passed away this morning due to complications from bypass surgery,” said Sonia Segal in a statement. He was 87 years old.

George Segal has always been best known as a comic actor, becoming one of the biggest stars on the screen in the 1970s, when humorous adult comedies thrived.

But his most famous role was in a harrowing drama, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, Based on Edward Albee’s acclaimed play.

He was the last surviving member of the tiny cast, all four Oscar nominees: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton for lead roles, Sandy Dennis and Segal for secondary roles. Women won Oscars, men did not.

For the younger crowd, he was best known for playing magazine editor Jack Gallo on NBC’s long series “Just Shoot Me” from 1997 to 2003, and as grandfather Albert “Pops” Solomon on “The Goldbergs” since 2013.

“Today we lost a legend. It was a real honor to be a small part of George Segal’s incredible legacy, ”said“ Goldbergs ”creator Adam Goldberg, who based the series on his childhood in the 1980s.“ Out of pure fate, I ended up choosing the perfect person to interpret Pops. Like my grandfather, George was a child at heart with a magical spark. “

In his Hollywood heyday, he played a boring intellectual alongside Barbra Streisand’s liberal prostitute in “The Owl and the Pussycat” from the 1970s; a traitorous husband alongside Glenda Jackson in 1973’s “A Touch of Class”; a desperate gambler alongside Elliot Gould in director Robert Altman’s 1974 film “California Split”; and a suburban bank robber next to Jane Fonda in 1977’s “Fun with Dick and Jane”.

Prepared to be a beautiful protagonist, Segal’s profile has grown steadily since his first film, “Young Doctors”, in 1961, in which he had the ninth turnover. His first performance as a protagonist was in “King Rat”, as a nefarious prisoner in a Japanese prison camp during World War II.

In “Virginia Woolf,” he played Nick, half a young couple invited to drink and witness the bitterness and frustration of a middle-aged couple.

Director Mike Nichols needed someone to get the approval of star Elizabeth Taylor, and he turned to Segal when Robert Redford refused.

According to Nichols’ biographer Mark Harris, the director said Segal was “close enough to the young god he needed to be for Elizabeth, and witty and funny enough to deal with all that humiliation.”

Segal died 10 years after Taylor.

He took the film to a long period of stardom. Then, in the late 1970s, “Tubarão” and other action films changed the nature of Hollywood films, and the light comedies in which Segal excelled became outdated.

“Then I got a little older,” he said in a 1998 interview. “I started to play the role of an urban father. And that guy kind of turned into a Chevy Chase, and after that there was nowhere to go. “

Except for the 1989 hit, “Look Who’s Talking,” Segal’s films in the 1980s and 1990s were lackluster. He turned to television and starred in two failed series, “Take Five” and “Murphy’s Law”.

Then he succeeded in 1997 with David Spade’s sitcom “Just Shoot Me”, in which he played Gallo, who despite his rude manner hires his daughter (Laura San Giacomo) and keeps Spade’s useless office boy on his sheet. payment simply by mistake of affection for both.

Series co-star Brian Posehn was one of many who paid tribute to Segal on Tuesday night.

“I grew up watching him, totally old school charm, effortless comic timing,” said Posehn “Just Shoot Me” from Segal. “Making scenes with him was one of the highlights of my life, but getting to know him a little and making the legend laugh was even cooler.”

Throughout his long acting career, Segal played the banjo for fun, becoming quite talented in the instrument he learned as a boy. He performed with his own Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band.

Born in 1934 in Great Neck, New York, the third child of a malt and hops dealer, Segal started having fun at the age of 8, performing magic tricks for children in the neighborhood.

He attended a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania and as a graduate student at Columbia University he organized “Bruno Linch and his Imperial Band”, for which he also played banjo.

After graduating, Segal worked without pay at the New York Theater Circle in the Square, doing everything from ticket purchases to substitute acting. He studied drama with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen, and made his first professional appearance as an actor off Broadway in Molière’s “Don Juan”. It lasted one night.

After a season on Broadway in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” he was drafted into the Army. Dismissed in 1957, he returned to the stage and would start receiving small roles in the cinema.

In 1956, Segal married television story editor Marion Sobel and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Polly, before divorcing in 1981.

He married his second wife, Linda Rogoff, in London in 1982 and was devastated when she died of a stomach disease 14 years later.

“It was a time when I said, ‘It’s not adding up; I don’t understand anymore, ”he reminded an interviewer in 1999.“ With Linda’s death, I lost interest in everything. I worked just to make a living. Acting, like life, has become a sad job. “

Finally, he reconnected with Sonia Schultz Greenbaum, who had been his girlfriend at school about 45 years earlier. They talked on the phone, sometimes for up to six hours, and got married a few months after they met.

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

The late AP Entertainment writer Bob Thomas contributed biographical material to this story.