Background

Ethnicity: Jason Segal’s father, Alvin Segel, is Ashkenazi Jewish (from a family from Russia, as well as Poland and Austria). Jason’s mother, Jillian (Jordan), is of English, Scottish, Irish, and fairly distant French, descent.

Jason Segel was born on January 18, 1980, in Los Angeles, California, the United States, to Alvin Segel, a lawyer and Jillian, a homemaker. He grew up in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, together with his younger sister, Alison, and an older brother, Adam.

Education

Jason Segel went to Hebrew school and later transferred to St. Matthew's Parish School, a private Episcopal school. He was very often picked on by his classmates for his religion as He was Jewish, but he attended a Christian elementary school.

His family is an affluent one and he received his education from the prestigious Harvard-Westlake School. He grew up to be a tall, well built and athletic teenager. By the time he was 12, he was taller than all his classmates standing over 6ft 4in tall. He used to play basketball for his high school team. He also developed an interest in acting during this time.

He won a slam dunk contest in high school and he was nicknamed “Dr. Dunk.” He was a backup to the team’s star center, Jason Collins, who went on to play in the NBA.

Career

The former basketball star got his big acting break when he put on a play The Zoo Story by Edward Albee in high school all on his own, and the head of the acting department suggested he give up basketball and give acting a try. Segel first laughed at the suggestion, but finally agreed to audition for the teacher and another woman. The woman happened to be the casting president at Paramount, and it was this audition that helped him land the role in the film Dead Man on Campus that jump-started his career.

He has come a long way since, appearing in films Can't Hardly Wait(1998), SLC Punk! (1998), and New Jersey Turnpikes (1999), before landing the role of Nick, a "freak" on Judd Apatow-produced cult television series Freaks and Geeks. Even though Freaks and Geeks ran for only one season (1999-2000), it made Segel a popular face. Apatow went on to create the sitcom Undeclared as a follow-up to Freaks and Geeks. It was aired on Fox during the 2001-2002 season.

He then played parts in films such as Slackers (2002), 11:14 (2003), Certainly Not A Fairytale (2003), The Good Humor Man (2005), and Bye Bye Benjamin (2006), and guest-starred in television series Alias (2005), and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2004 to 2005).

His more well-known roles are in the popular Hollywood films Knocked Up (2007) and Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), and the television comedy series How I Met Your Mother which debuted in 2005. He proved to be very popular in this role and endeared himself to his fans with his goofy antics. The show became highly successful and ran for nine seasons before winding up in 2014.

In 2008 he wrote and starred in the romantic comedy-drama film Forgetting Sarah Marshall which was co-produced by Segel’s longtime collaborator Judd Apatow. The film received positive reviews from critics and was a huge hit at the box office. Segel also made a big splash by including his own full-frontal nudity in the movie, aiming for pure comedic value. "If you can find the line between sympathetic and creepy, you have reached a very funny area," he explained.

As an actor, Segel is quite famous for his roles in bromantic comedies, and he lived up to his reputation with the 2009 film, I Love You, Man. He portrayed a man who is about to get married but has no best friend to be the best man at his wedding. The film was both a critical as well as commercial success.

The year 2010 was a very busy one for him. He appeared in the comedy Get Him to the Greek and also wrote most of the soundtrack's music. The same year he voiced Gru's arch-rival Vector in the Universal's CGI animated film, Despicable Me and appeared as Horatio in a fantasy comedy film Gulliver's Travels.

He was involved with several projects in 2011 as well. He acted in the comedy Bad Teacher which also starred Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake. Later the same year he helped revive the Muppets film franchise with the musical comedy The Muppets which he co-wrote and produced.

In 2012, Segel appeared in Jeff, Who Lives at Home, comedy-drama movie about a man who discovers his destiny while out running an errand for his mother, and The Five-Year Engagement about a couple who have an extra-long engagement because they can't nail down a date for their wedding.

In 2015 he portrayed noted writer David Foster Wallace in the drama film The End of the Tour. The film, which was based on a memoir by David Lipsky, received widespread acclaim from critics and was honored in numerous Best of 2015 lists, including The New York Times and Vanity Fair.

In 2019, Segel is going to appear in The Friend is a drama film, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, from a screenplay by Brad Ingelsby. His co-stars are Casey Affleck and Dakota Johnson.

Achievements

• 

  Jason Segel is best known for his role as Marshall Eriksen in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother in which he portrayed a lawyer with interest in paranormal activities. Famed for its unique structure and eccentric humor, the series was a huge success and ran for nine seasons, making Segel a well-known and successful actor.
  
  In 2011, he won the Critics Choice Award for Best Song (shared with Amy Adams and Bret McKenzie) for The Muppets. The same year he also received Chicago Film Critics Association Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award. He won the Scott Brown Memorial You’ve Just Done Something for Women Award in 2014. In 2012, Segel was named the Hasty Pudding Man of the Year.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Lollilove

    (Saving the world, one sucker at a time! Jenna Fischer (NB...)

    2004
  • The End Of The Tour

    (A funny and touching exploration of fame, success, and fr...)

    2015
  • Can't Hardly Wait

    (Commencement ceremony is over, it's time for Huntington H...)

    1998
  • The Five-Year Engagement

    (From the producer of Bridesmaids and the director of Forg...)

    2012
  • This is 40

    (From the director of Knocked Up comes a comedic look at a...)

    2012
  • Knocked Up

    (From writer/director Judd Apatow is the Unrated version t...)

    2007
  • Jeff Who Lives At Home

    (A 30-year-old slacker (Jason Segel) finds his true destin...)

    2011
  • Bad Teacher

    (A foul-mouthed seventh-grade teacher who is dumped by her...)

    2011
  • Sex Tape

    (Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz star in this fun and racy co...)

    2014
  • Dead Man On Campus

    (College roommates discover an obscure loophole in the sch...)

    1998
  • Gulliver's Travels

    (Jack Black finds himself in the land of Lilliput where he...)

    2010
  • Get Him to the Greek

    (A young music exec has three days to transport a washed-u...)

    2010
  • SLC Punk

    (Growing up punk in Mormon Salt Lake City wasn't easy in t...)

    1998
  • 11: 14

    (11:14 follows the intricate connections of five different...)

    2003
  • Forgetting Sarah Marshall

    (It's the hysterically funny look at how far one man will ...)

    2008
  • Despicable Me

    (A supervillain discovers he has a heart while using three...)

    2010
  • The Muppets

    (Walter, the world's biggest Muppet fan, and his friends u...)

    2011
  • I Love You, Man

    (A newly engaged guy sets out to find the perfect "Best Ma...)

    2009
  • Slackers

    (Higher Education Just Hit A New Low...When the school gee...)

    2002

• TV series

  • Freaks and Geeks

    (Freaks And Geeks focused on two groups of outsiders: the ...)

    2000
  • Undeclared

    (College life as seen through the eyes of Steven Karp; a f...)

    2002
  • How I Met Your Mother

    (Ted, in the year 2030, recounts to his son and daughter t...)

    2014

Religion

Jason Segel has stated that he was raised Jewish, as well as “a little bit of everything”. He also had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony.

He is an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church, and married couple Jason Wood and Abbe Wood on The Tonight Show on July 6, 2010.

Politics

Segel is a Democrat and an Obama-supporter.

Views

Jason Segel has done charity work with the Fulfillment Fund.

Quotations: "When a woman does nudity in a movie, men immediately switch into a sexual mode. For women, from what I understand, it's not like that. They see a naked, out-of-shape man crying and it's funny - something weird, disturbing and disgusting we can all laugh at."

"One thing that I think never goes out of style is just purity. Niceness and purity. And the Muppets have never lost that. Kermit especially is just wide-eyed wonder, unblinking. And he can't blink. Which I think probably helps."

Personality

On How I Met Your Mother, Alyson Hannigan refused to kiss Jason because of his addiction to smoking. According to her, it was like "kissing an ashtray." So he made her a deal that he would pay her $10 for every cigarette he smoked. Segel managed to quit for a year, but the stress caused him to start up again.

Growing up, Segel was obsessed with Superman. He used to wear a cape under his clothes until he was 12.

Interests

• playing the piano

• Politicians

  Barack Obama

• Writers

  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle, Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne, Dear Girls Above Me by Charlie McDowell, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

• Sport & Clubs

  basketball

• Music & Bands

  Van Morrison - Astral Weeks, Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road, Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody, Billy Joel - Piano Man, Les Miserables - One Day More

Connections

Jason Segel has dated several women including aspiring actress Bojana Novakovic, Michelle Williams, and photographer Alexis Mixter.

Father:

Alvin Segel

Mother:

Jillian Segel

Sister:

Alison Segel

Alison is a writer from Los Angeles, California and talented illustrator. She is a current staff writer at Elite Daily and the former managing creative editor at women.com.

Brother:

Adam Segel

Adam is a money manager and serves as the Chief Executive Officer at Online Buddies, Inc. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

ex-girlfriend:

Bojana Novakovic

ex-girlfriend:

Michelle Williams

girlfriend:

Alexis Mixter

colleague:

Seth Rogen

colleague:

Katherine Heigl

colleague:

Elisabeth Moss

colleague:

Kristen Bell

colleague:

James Franco

colleague:

Charlie Hunnam

colleague:

Jesse Eisenberg

References

• Jason Segel on Twitter