• Faith: Judaism
• Career: Actor
• Birthday:  January 18, 1980

Jason Segel is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer and author best known for playing Marshall Eriksen on the long-running sitcom How I Met Your Mother. He first gained attention through his work with producer Judd Apatow before establishing himself as a leading figure in Hollywood comedy with films including Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I Love You, Man and The Muppets. In later years, Segel expanded into more dramatic roles and earned acclaim as the co-creator and star of the Apple TV series Shrinking.

Jason Jordan Segel was born January 18, 1980, in Santa Monica, California. He grew up in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles with his older brother, Adam, and younger sister, Alison. His father, Alvin Segel, was a lawyer, while his mother, Jillian, came from a Christian family of English, Scottish, Irish and French ancestry. His father is Jewish.

Segel attended St. Matthew's Parish School, a private Episcopal school, before attending Harvard-Westlake School. At 6-foot-4, he was a member of Harvard-Westlake's boys' basketball teams that won California state championships in 1996 and 1997. He served as a backup to future NBA player Jason Collins and earned the nickname "Dr. Dunk" after winning a high school slam dunk contest.

Segel began acting professionally in the late 1990s, appearing in films including Can't Hardly Wait, Dead Man on Campus and SLC Punk!. His breakthrough came as Nick Andopolis in Judd Apatow's critically acclaimed television series Freaks and Geeks, which aired from 1999 to 2000. Although short-lived, the series became a cult favorite and helped launch the careers of several cast members. Segel later appeared on Apatow's Undeclared and had a recurring role on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

His biggest television breakthrough arrived in 2005 when he was cast as Marshall Eriksen on CBS's How I Met Your Mother. Segel remained with the series throughout its nine-season run, appearing in more than 200 episodes before the show ended in 2014.

Segel also developed a successful film career. He wrote and starred in the 2008 romantic comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall, drawing parts of the story from his own experiences. He followed it with roles in I Love You, Man, Bad Teacher, Jeff, Who Lives at Home, The Five-Year Engagement, This Is 40 and Sex Tape. He voiced Vector in Despicable Me and co-wrote, executive-produced and starred in Disney's The Muppets in 2011.

Segel demonstrated his dramatic range by portraying author David Foster Wallace in 2015's The End of the Tour, earning an Independent Spirit Award nomination. He later appeared in Our Friend, Windfall and HBO's Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. In 2023, he began starring as grieving therapist Jimmy Laird in Shrinking, which he co-created with Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein. The performance earned Segel multiple Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy nominations. He has also written several young-adult novels, including the Nightmares! and Otherworld series.

Segel has generally kept his personal life relatively private. He previously dated his Freaks and Geeks co-star Linda Cardellini, actress Michelle Williams and photographer Alexis Mixter. In 2023, he began a relationship with dancer Kayla Radomski, and the couple announced their engagement in June 2025. Segel is also an ordained minister through the Universal Life Church and once officiated a wedding on The Tonight Show.

Jason Segel's Religious Beliefs

Segel comes from an interfaith family and has described himself as having been raised Jewish while also experiencing Christian traditions. His father is Jewish, while his mother is Christian. As a child, Segel attended Hebrew school and had a Bar Mitzvah, while simultaneously attending the Episcopal St. Matthew's Parish School. He has described his upbringing as "a little bit of everything."

Segel has spoken about how this unusual religious upbringing affected his sense of identity. He recalled being viewed as the Jewish child at his Christian school while sometimes being regarded as the Christian child at Hebrew school, an experience that made him aware at an early age of the ways people categorize one another.

As an adult, Segel is generally identified with Judaism culturally rather than as a strictly observant or traditionally religious Jew. His Jewish upbringing, Hebrew education and Bar Mitzvah remain important parts of his background, but he has not presented himself publicly as someone who closely follows a particular religious practice. Instead, his comments about his childhood suggest an outlook shaped by exposure to both Jewish and Christian traditions.