Jason Segel

Jason plays Marshall in the TV smash How I Met Your Mother with Alyson Hannigan and Josh Radnor. The show is a giant flashback framed in the future with Ted, played by Josh, narrating to his children about how he, um, met their mother. The Dad version of Ted is played entirely in voice-over by Bob Saget. So that's Jason playing Ted, who grows up and turns into Bob. Get it? Great, then explain it to us!

Speaking of people named Marshall, Jason just wrote AND starred in a movie called Forgetting Sarah Marshall! Mila Kunis is in that, and so are Jason's friends Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill, who have both starred in some of Judd Apatow's projects with him.

See, Jason is one of Judd's major regular actors, appearing in many movies that Judd wrote or directed, or with others who also are frequently in Judd's films. Jason's in the fantasy classic Gulliver's Travels, starring Jack Black and Amanda Peet. He's in The Adventurer's Handbook with Jonah again, and Jason Schwatzman, about another amazing journey. In I Love You, Man, with John Favreau, Paul is a groom deciding if Jason should be his best man. He was in Judd's movie Knocked Up, which starred Seth Rogen... all the way back to his role as clingy ex-boyfriend in one of Judd's TV shows, called Undeclared, also with Seth.

(When you see the same people in the same kinds of movies with the same director over and over, those actors are called an "ensemble," a French word you say "on-SOM-ble." Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Harold Ramis, and Christopher Guest are just some directors who have an ensemble they work with again and again.)

Jason's in two new kids' movies, too. In the toon Despicable Me, Jason helps foil a caveman's plot of steal the Moon! And he's going to be in something or other with the Muppets, (but not the Sarah Marshall vampire puppets!)

On the big screen, Jason was in Can't Hardly Wait with another Seth, Seth Green, but he had a much bigger role as Sam Schechter in the hit Slackers with Jason Schwartzman and Laura Prepon.

Earlier, Jason was in two of our favorite Jew-ful teen shows: Freaks and Geeks (created by guess who? Judd!) with John Francis Daley and others, and Alias with Michael Vartan and even more others. (click the names to see which other Jewish actors were in those shows!)

Even when he's not acting, Jason likes to be among his fellows Jews on TV. In fact, in 2005 he was part of a televised Yom Kippur service that included Seinfeld star Jason Alexander, talk show host Larry King, movie critic Leonard Maltin, and actor-singer Theodore Bikel (see the Bonus below). It was watched by 47 million people! Wow- try going on TV in front of that many people… when you're fasting!

Aside from acting, Jason plays piano and also a little basketball-- his high school team was the California state champion.

Bonus:

If he had only chosen acting, Theodore Bikel would be a legend. Of course, the same would be true if he had only chosen singing!

As an actor, Theo— as his friends call him— became famous as the first person to play Captain von Trapp in the musical Sound of Music. He was also the Hungarian count who calls in love with Liza in the movie version of My Fair Lady. Sci-fi fans might know him from his cameos on Babylon 5, in which he played a rabbi in space, and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Theo was in too many classic TV shows from 1950s to the ’80s to mention, but he was a regular on the 1980’s evening soaps Falcon Crest and Dynasty and on All in the Family. He often played a Russian or other European character, often a count or some other nobleman. Either that, or a rabbi. Two of his most Jewish projects were the true-story TV movies Victory at Entebbe, about how the Israeli army freed Jewish hostages in Uganda, and The Diary of Anne Frank.

Two of his all-time classic movies were The Defiant Ones, in which Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier are two escaped convicts who must overcome racism and save each other… and The African Queen, in which Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn flee the Nazis in Africa and um, must overcome their social-class differences to save each other.

As for music, the title of Theo’s albums sums up what he sang which is Folk Songs From Just About Everywhere. While focusing on Jewish music in Hebrew and Yiddish, Theo sang in English, Scottish, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Russian, Polish, Bolivian, and even more languages! Of course, given his stage career, he also sang Broadway classics, like on his 2006 CD, recorded when he was 82 years old!

Theo was born in Austria in 1924, but his family moved to pre-independent Israel in 1938. He loved languages and wanted to be a teacher. But then he discovered action, so he moved to England to study at the Royal Academy for Dramatic Arts, where his acting skill was noticed by no less than Laurence Olivier! It was also in England that Theo learned to play guitar. Since he knew so many languages, he ended up singing in them and playing parts requiring strong accents. After he moved to the U.S., President Carter appointed Theo to the National Council of the Arts in 1977. Theo helped create the famous Newport Folk Festival and also served as Vice President of the American Jewish Congress.

Bonus Bonus:

Jason’s character is often the zany friend who gets our hero out a slump by making him go do fun things. One of the best examples of this kind of friend was Jack Tripper’s friend Larry on the hit show Three’s Company, played by Jewish actor Richard Kline. (Jack was played by John Ritter, who wasn’t Jewish, but who was later the dad in 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter.)

Richard wasn’t playing another Larry when he was in Adam Sandler’s I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, though; that time his character’s name was Mr. Auerbach. He was in two other hit movies, Barry Levinson’s Liberty Heights, and Saving Silverman with Amanda Peet and Jack Black. In 2009, he’s in a movie that takes its title from chess: Knight to F4.

But Richard has been a TV regular before Three’s Company and since. Aside from starring on that show for seven years, he was in many other shows that sort of defined the 1970s (click to see his Jewish co-stars): The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Eight is Enough (way before Jon and Kate Plus 8 or the “Octomom”!), and Maude, starring the great Jewish comic actress Bea Arthur.

Richard then went on to appear in many of the shows that defined the 1980s! These include more sitcoms, like One Day at a Time, Silver Spoons, Married with Children, and Punky Brewster… plus doctor and crime dramas like St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Hunter, and Simon & Simon.

Into the 1990s, Richard continued to appear in sitcoms like The Nanny, Sabrina and Family Matters and more dramas like ER and NYPD Blue. In the 2000s, he’s popped up on Gilmore Girls, Judging Amy, and Inside Schwartz… coming full circle back to the 1970s with an appearance on That 70’s Show!

Richard, who was born in New York, served in Viet Nam— and while he was not shot, he was struck by lighning! Today, he teaches acting while still taking parts. He hasn’t had another hit like Three’s Company, but hey… lightning could strike twice!