Jason Segel

For the first decade or so of Jason Segel's career as a Hollywood actor, he appeared in mostly teen-oriented material -- beginning with the jet-black comedy Dead Man on Campus (1998), then the NBC comedy drama Freaks and Geeks (1999), then the truly ugly frat-boy comedy feature Slackers (2002), helmed by tyro Dewey Nicks. After a brief turn as Larry the Hippie in Mark Rucker's farcical melodrama Die, Mommie, Die! (2003), Segel achieved broader recognition for his performance as Marshall on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother. He also played Jason in the big-screen feature Knocked Up (2007), Judd Apatow's uproarious follow-up to The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

Segel both authored the script and starred in the big-screen romantic comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008). In the film, he plays a young man roundly dumped by his screen-queen girlfriend (Kristen Bell), only to head off to a resort and discover that she's staying there with her new significant other. -- Nathan Southern, AllMovie, www.allmovie.com