The Deadline Hollywood portal and Variety magazine reported on the death of the acting legend on Wednesday night. “The family is sadly announcing that George Segal died this morning of complications after heart surgery,” Segal’s wife Sonia said in a statement on Tuesday.
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George Segal was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1960s and 1970s. He came to international fame with the contradictory role of Corporal King in the 1965 film drama The King of the Rat, and had the greatest success the following year with Nick’s role in Nichols’ adaptation of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. His role as a young biology professor in his study of the breakdown of his marriage to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton earned him Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.
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Over the next ten years, he played a number of characters, including in the war film Most u Remagenu, which was shot in the summer of 1968 in Czechoslovakia. He also appeared in Ivan Passer’s film Born to Win (1971).
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From serious characters, Segal gradually switched to comedy and became a popular representative of tragicomic and romantic roles of adventurous and unlucky heroes afflicted with emotional problems. In the early 80’s, his star faded a bit, so he started looking for a job on television and as a banjo player he also regularly performed with his jazz band.
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In the mid-1990s, he saw a comeback of television (series Eat Me Eat or the film Mage Houdini) and film (Cable Guy or Two Faces of Love) and a return to Broadway theaters.
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