To follow Jason Segel's career is to feel, more than with most actors, that you're watching someone grow up and fumble his way through the stages of young adulthood. As the sweet stoner Nick Andopolis in "Freaks and Geeks," he weathered high school heartbreak, humiliation and a brush with disco, while by "Undeclared" he was the guy from home jealously keeping tabs on his girlfriend at college. In "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," which he co-wrote, he recovered from a brutal breakup by (unsuccessfully) fleeing to Hawaii, while in "I Love You, Man" he navigated a grown-up friendship with as many emotional ups and downs as a romance.
And as Marshall Eriksen, his character on "How I Met Your Mother," prepares for the birth of his first child with longtime love Lily Aldrin (Alyson Hannigan), Segel's film roles also seem to trend toward men who are ready to settle down - well, except for the title character in "Jeff, Who Lives at Home," who never went anywhere in the first place. "The Muppets" ends with Segel popping the question, and "The Five-Year Engagement" begins with it, as his character Tom charmingly flubs an elaborate plan to propose to his girlfriend of a year, Violet (Emily Blunt), who of course says yes anyway.