A Young Actor With Nothing to Hide

LOS ANGELES

THERE’S no way to talk about Jason Segel’s performance in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” without addressing a certain scene that, in the canon of male humiliation comedy, seems destined to rival that notorious encounter with an ill-fated apple pie.

In the opening minutes of the film (which is scheduled for release on April 18) Mr. Segel, the 28-year-old actor who is also a screenwriter of the movie, has just stepped out of a shower when his girlfriend declares that she is breaking up with him. Too devastated by the news to put on his clothes or grab a towel, Mr. Segel — for 73 excruciating frames — remains literally and utterly exposed.

As an actor, Mr. Segel could have asked that his nudity be obscured, “Austin Powers” style; as a writer, concocting scenes for himself, he could have omitted the moment altogether. But he insisted that the scene of him in the altogether appear in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” in all its cringe-inducing glory, because it actually happened to him.

A few years ago he received a call from his girlfriend to tell him she was headed to his apartment from the airport. Mr. Segel prepared himself for what he thought would be an amorous reunion; instead he was soon suffering a naked breakup of his own.

“I was trying to experience this viscerally, as a person,” Mr. Segel said during a recent interview at his home in West Hollywood. “But all I could think was: ‘This is hilarious. I cannot wait for her to leave so I can write this down.’ ”

His eagerness to preserve and publicize this mortifying scene is not a one-time act of masochism, but rather the fulfillment of a lesson taught to him by his longtime friend and mentor Judd Apatow: Always make sure that your comedy comes from a personal place.

Like Mr. Apatow, the writer-director of “Knocked Up” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and the prolific producer of comedies like “Superbad” and “Anchorman,” Mr. Segel has no shortage of romantic and professional embarrassments to distill into his work. But having seen how suffering — or at least the perception of suffering — has paid off for Mr. Apatow and his protégés (including Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill), he understands how pain can be both a burden and a commodity.

“I was being paid quite a bit of money for this,” Mr. Segel said of the film as he polished off a cigarette, “and in therapy you pay quite a bit of money. And it was the exact same result. As opposed to paying a hundred dollars per session, I got a free trip to Hawaii.”

Standing 6 foot 4, with an easygoing hey-dude manner and a few days of stubble sprinkled on his chin, Mr. Segel can simultaneously evoke the characters played by Judge Reinhold and Sean Penn in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Mr. Apatow found that mix of vulnerability and ruggedness appealing when he met Mr. Segel at a casting session for the NBC high school comedy “Freaks and Geeks” nearly a decade ago.

“He suffers and he’s needy, and I relate to him personally,” Mr. Apatow said in a telephone interview. Particularly in dealing with the opposite sex, Mr. Apatow said, “we both have that same feeling that we’re obsessed with women and they don’t actually like us that much.”

For a while Mr. Segel’s early career difficulties seemed linked to Mr. Apatow’s own: after “Freaks and Geeks” was canceled, he wanted to cast Mr. Segel as the star of “Undeclared,” a college sitcom for Fox. But the network nixed the idea, Mr. Apatow said, believing that the show needed a clearer underdog. (Mr. Segel played a small supporting role on the show. But regardless, “Undeclared” did not survive its freshman year.)

Mr. Apatow also sought Mr. Segel for a supporting role in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” as a friend of the title character, portrayed by Steve Carell, but was refused by Universal Pictures. That movie went on to become a $100 million hit, setting Mr. Apatow on his path to ubiquity but leaving Mr. Segel depressed and fearing for his future.

Mr. Apatow continued to help Mr. Segel by giving him small roles in films like “Knocked Up.” He also took him aside and gave him some advice. As Mr. Segel recalled, “He said to me: ‘You’re kind of a weird dude. The only way you’re going to make it is if you start writing your own material.’ ”

At first glance Mr. Segel’s career would seem more charmed than tormented. A Los Angeles native, he was recommended by a high school teacher at the age of 16 to a casting executive at Paramount, and by 18 he was acting in comedies like “Dead Man on Campus.” And for the last three years, he has been a star of the CBS sitcom “How I Met Your Mother.” But his first efforts at screenwriting were frustrating. A script he wrote at 21, for a “Goonies”-style adventure called “Nightmares Beware,” was purchased but never produced; a television pilot he created for HBO with Mr. Rogen, the star of “Knocked Up,” met a similar fate.

And at one particularly low ebb in his career Mr. Segel determined that he would make a name for himself by composing a rock ’n’ roll musical about Dracula — to be performed with puppets.

His friends talked him out of it, but that musical has been resurrected, becoming a prominent element in Mr. Segel’s script for “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” which he wrote with Nicholas Stoller. The movie tells the story of a lovelorn composer who flees to a Hawaiian resort to get over his breakup with a well-known television actress, only to find that his ex-girlfriend is staying at the same resort with her new boyfriend.

Ultimately, Mr. Segel said, the film allows him to confront his own failed relationships, a cathartic outlet that also appealed to his collaborator, Mr. Stoller, a writer on “Undeclared” and the director of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”

“We’re both obsessed with relationships and why they don’t work,” Mr. Stoller said. “Guys crying make us laugh, and no one cries funnier than Jason. I want to say we’re bringing back the grown man crying, but we’re really not, because it’s never really existed.”

The movie’s appeal for Kristen Bell, who plays Sarah Marshall, comes from its subversion of the traditional gender divisions of romantic comedies. “It’s the opposite in this film,” she said, “because Jason’s the one saying, ‘Let’s settle down, let’s be responsible.’ And she’s saying, ‘I like doing the red carpet, I want to go out on a Saturday night.’ She’s unapologetic for what she wants, and she’s definitely more of the guy.”

The film’s philosophy of equality and inversion, Ms. Bell said, extended to every part of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” even those flashed momentarily by Mr. Segel in the film’s first minutes. “I’m not pining for more male nudity,” she said, “but the fact is, you just don’t see it in these kinds of films.”

For Mr. Segel there is an obvious satisfaction in seeing his crushing embarrassments transmuted into crowd-pleasing comedy, but he is clearly enjoying other benefits from his burgeoning celebrity. He recently moved into a stately, Gothic four-bedroom house that is, in his words, “stumbling distance” from the Chateau Marmont, so close that he can order room service to his home — and he has.

And despite his regular appearances on prime-time television, it is only in the prelude to the release of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” that he has found he can now take meetings with the studios, production companies and casting directors who previously shunned him.

In one such meeting, with Disney, he offhandedly mentioned that he would like to write a new movie for his childhood idols, the Muppets; within days the studio had signed Mr. Segel and Mr. Stoller to write the script.

(“I want to revive them to their previous glory, before they became a novelty act,” Mr. Segel said. “When it wasn’t, like, ‘Muppets Underwater.’ ‘Muppets in the Sahara.’ ‘Muppets on the Moon!’ ”)

Mr. Segel’s exhibitionism has also helped lead to a starring role in a buddy movie with Paul Rudd, “I Love You, Man,” and a deal to write a screenplay with Mr. Stoller for a relationship comedy, “Five-Year Engagement.”

Mr. Segel said he was prepared to be forever associated with those awkward opening minutes of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”; at a recent screening his nude scene caused his sister to burst out laughing and reduced his mother to tears. But, he added, he is already becoming known around town for more mercenary reasons.

A few days ago, he said, he was on his way home when a delivery car for a local convenience store screeched to halt next to him and its driver emerged.

As Mr. Segel recalled, “He goes, ‘Hey, sorry to bother you. I just recognized you. I do an amazing Kermit voice.’ ”