The Actor Within: Intimate Conversations with Great Actors

George Segal

97 i George Segal George Segal emerged as one of Hollywood’s hottest film stars of the late 1960s and early 1970s. As a teenager, I adored his romantic comedies: Where’s Poppa? (1970), A Touch of Class (1973), and Blume in Love (1973). Sitting down together in my living room, George threw me his signature smile and said, ‘‘Rose, tell me about yourself. I’d like to know who I’m about to share my story with.’’ I told him in brief that I had grown up in Hollywood, started my career as a dancer, loved the movies, and for the past dozen years had been investigating the elements of artistic creativity. ‘‘Now it’s your turn,’’ I said, turning on my tape recorder. When did you first know that you enjoyed performing?’’ ‘‘When I was a kid, my father brought home a magic trick that captivated me. It enabled me to turn a penny into a dime. Fascinated with slight-of-hand tricks, I soon began putting on magic shows. My mother helped me take out an ad in the Great Neck Daily News and chau√eured me around to neighborhood birthday parties where I’d do my tricks. I called myself Prestidigitator George Segal Jr.’’ ‘‘You must have been a very outgoing kid.’’ ‘‘Actually, I was a very shy, uncomfortable in my own skin. But I saw that I could get laughs. In my teens, acting in school plays was the only thing that made me feel good about myself. I had acne and bad posture and was an average athlete, when being a top athlete was everything. The only time that I had a strong sense of self was when I was on the stage. A light bulb would turn on inside, and I’d come alive.’’ ‘‘Do you recall the moment when you knew that you wanted be a professional actor?’’ George grew silent, pensive. I waited. ‘‘My father died when I was sixteen. He had a lawyer, Sidney Madison, who he’d entrusted with all his legal a√airs. I remember going to Madison ’s o≈ce after having informed my mother that I was thinking about becoming an actor. This very imposing, pipe-smoking, bow-tie-wearing lawyer sat me down and said, ‘You know, George, the average yearly income of an Equity actor is five hundred dollars. The odds are against you making it in that business.’ As he was saying that, I vowed that I would 98 The Actor Within become an actor. It didn’t matter to me how tough it would be to break in or how much money I’d make. It was the thing I lived for.’’ ‘‘You managed to defy the odds and achieve success. How did you do it?’’ ‘‘The dominos fell right for me. I can’t explain how I landed roles in plays by some of the great playwrights of that era—Harold Pinter, Arthur Miller, and Edward Albee, to name a few—or how I ended up in films directed by top directors, like Mike Nichols, Karl Reiner, Robert Altman, and Mel Frank. These titans must have believed that using me could make them money. This realization convinced me that something other than happenstance was at play.’’ ‘‘What do you think they saw in you?’’ ‘‘Beyond desire, I really don’t know, because that’s all I had. For me, performing was an addiction. It’s all I ever wanted to do.’’ ‘‘You studied acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.’’ ‘‘The Actors Studio was like being in the marines. They stripped you down as an actor, divested you of any sense of purpose so that you had to start all over again. Lee Strasberg was on the sour side, didn’t speak much or deal well with people. I needed some stroking, and he didn’t do that, at least not with me. I was with him for about three years before moving over to Uta Hagen. She and I immediately had a good rapport. I’d do a scene, and she’d say, ‘That’s good!’ She rebuilt my confidence. But the truth is no one really teaches you how to act. All actors develop technique , ideas of character, and how to do scenes because we have to. In my case, I eventually learned to get out of my own way and just let the character take over.’’ ‘‘What was your first big break in the business?’’ ‘‘I...