The film has proved a huge hit, having taken more than $330 million worldwide, outdoing other 3D epics such as Monsters vs Aliens, How to Train Your Dragon, Ice Age 3 and Clash of the Titans. And it’s the latest feather in Segel’s increasingly weighty cap. As well as being a regular on popular sitcom How I Met Your Mother, the 30-year-old starred in hit bromance I Love You, Man and is best known for writing and starring in the neo-classic chick flick for guys, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

There is some irony that Universal, the studio behind Despicable Me and Sarah Marshall, initially thwarted his ascent. Comedy uber producer-director Judd Apatow wanted Segel cast in The 40-Year-Old Virgin but the studio deemed him to be too much of a – well – a nobody. Despondency followed.

”’You know what?” Segel says. ”To be honest, yeah, that was an unpleasant time for me when 40-Year-Old Virgin didn’t work out.”

His career ”started out with a bang” on Apatow’s TV shows Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. Though the programs were short-lived, Segel’s comic potential was evident to Apatow and his colleagues.

”We kind of thought I was about to be America’s next great superstar,” Segel jests. ”Then, next thing you know, I didn’t work for five years. It was very, very tough but it drove me to write Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

”Then I started doing my TV show [How I Met Your Mother] and everything really changed in the next few years.”

Indeed they did. Segel has now been on HIMYM for six years, ”couldn’t be more proud of” Despicable Me, is set to appear in Gulliver’s Travels at Christmas, has just wrapped the drama Jeff Who Lives at Home opposite Susan Sarandon, stars in the romantic comedy Bad Teacher with Cameron Diaz and is planning to shoot another comedy with Sarah Marshall director Nicholas Stoller next year, titled Five-Year Engagement. ”So I’m a happy dude,” he chirps.

Furthermore, Get Him to the Greek, which Stoller directed, features Russell Brand reprising rock star Aldous Snow, who Segel created for Sarah Marshall. At the risk of being nosey, does Segel get royalties for that? ”You bet your ass I do,” he says with a distinctly hearty laugh.

He credits much of his success to the work ethic instilled in him by Apatow. There ”absolutely” is an Apatow school of comedy, Segel says. ”He taught us about hard work and about how, if you’re willing to put in the effort and pay your dues and do a ton of writing and a ton of acting, he’ll be there to support you. He’s really the best mentor someone could hope for.”

The man/child theme common to many Apatow comedies is something on which Segel was eager to put his own stamp, first with Sarah and then with I Love You, Man.

”One of the things Judd really taught us is to write from the truth we know,” Segel says.

”It’s such a broad thing to say but I really am interested in exploring the gritty, gritty truth of what’s going on with me … When I get to the point where I have kids, I’ll probably write a movie and explore that.”

Meanwhile, Segel is busy preparing to make a movie for children – the much-anticipated new Muppets film, tentatively (and modestly) titled The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made.

”The Muppets were legitimately my first comic influence,” he says. ”This movie isn’t like retroactive love. Any of my friends will tell you I’ve had Muppet figures and Muppet puppet replicas in my house for 20 years. I just love them and I’ve been making short films with puppets for a long time.”

While preparing the puppet sequence for Sarah, Segel worked with the company of late Muppets creator Jim Henson. He asked to see Kermit and Miss Piggy and was told Disney now owned them.

”Something clicked in my mind. ‘Oh. Got it.”’ Segel says, before pausing. His tone now becomes very serious. ”I felt like the Muppets had changed at some point and I think I know why. So I went to Disney and pitched an idea for a new Muppet movie that was in the spirit of the late-’70s, early-’80s movies and The Muppet Show. Now, three years later, we’re getting ready to start making this movie at the end of the year.”

He went full frontal for the role, but he was adament it wouldn’t pigeonhole him into the buddy comedy roles popular with Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd.

That’s why he turned to the fuzzy comedy of The Muppets.

“Sarah Marshall had just come out and everyone was expecting my next movie would be an R-rated comedy,” he said.

“I went to Disney on a blind pitch and I went, ‘You guys own The Muppets and these guys are my big comic influences – I would really like a shot at bringing The Muppets back’,” he said.

“They all chuckled at me like they thought I was making a joke, and I was, ‘No, I’m serious’ and the next hing you know three years later we’re going to make a Muppet movie.”

One of his choices was Edward Albee’s Zoo Story. “The play has a 25-minute monologue,” Segel says. “I quite simply wanted to see if I could memorize that much material. And once I did, I thought, ‘I guess I should perform this.’ Oddly enough, (a Paramount Studios casting executive) happened to come to the production.”

Thus a career was born.

In addition to the animated 3-D family film Despicable Me, Segel has three more upcoming films. In the live-action Gulliver’s Travels, which is due out in December, he plays Horatio alongside Jack Black’s Gulliver. In Bad Teacher, he is involved in a love triangle with Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake. And in Jeff Who Lives at Home, he shares the screen with Susan Sarandon and Ed Helms.

He also is responsible for reviving the Muppets, convincing rights-owner Disney that he should write the screenplay for The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made. The film goes into production later this year.

“The Muppets truly were my first comic influence. Kermit was the first version of Tom Hanks that I got to know. He’s Jimmy Stewart, the idea of the Everyman, which is what I try to do,” he says.

His latest role as Vector in Despicable Me, about how a super-villain (voiced by Steve Carell) is tamed by three little girls, is Segel’s first attempt at voicing a film character.

The isolating nature of voicing an animated character initially bothered Segel. “Once I got used to not having instant feedback, it was a really fun process. They open the mike and let you riff for two or three hours at a time — a bit self-indulgent, but it’s a blast.”

Also a blast: Weaving personal experiences into his screenplays. Like the nude breakup scene in 2008′s Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

“When I was really young, my mother said to me, ‘When you go out in the world, you’re representing the job I did as a mother,’ ” Segel says. “She wasn’t really happy that I showed my penis. In true motherly fashion, she sent out a mass e-mail to my family saying, ‘I just want you all to know that in Jason’s upcoming film, he has chosen to do full frontal nudity, but please note, it is not gratuitous and is essential to the plot.’ ”

Segel says How I Met Your Mother, which begins its sixth season this fall, changed his life. “I was happy to sign for another year,” he says. “But once I’ve fulfilled what I said I’d do (eight years), I’ll probably move on — although in this economy, you can’t scoff at having a steady job.”

Segel says his character Marshall is “the least like me of all the characters I’ve played. I’m mostly a mix of my characters from Sarah Marshall and I Love You, Man.”

Although Segel has been in several long-term relationships, including a five-year-long stint with Freaks and Geeksco-star Linda Cardellini, he doesn’t feel the urge to settle down.

“The 30s are when men hit their stride. I feel pleasantly old,” he says. “There’s some gray in my beard, but I’m still having fun. But I’m working awfully hard. I guess that’s being a man.”

On how his own childhood helped him get into character as the evil, nerdy villain, Vector:
“I’ve been 6′ 4″ since I was 12. I was 6′ 4″, 100 lbs. I looked like Jack Skellington. Kids used to stand around me in a circle and one by one they would jump on my back and the rest would chant, ‘Ride the oaf! Ride the oaf!’ It’s true. So you either become funny, which is hopefully what I did, or you become a villain, which is where I got the idea for Vector; he’s a guy who was horribly picked on and this is where he’s ended up.”

On how and why his musical talents first came about:
“I taught myself to play piano when I was 17 to pick up girls… The first thing I did was I found a really not-that-intelligent girl and I told her that I wrote ‘Your Song,’ by Elton John. I was like, ‘I wrote this for you.’ And then I lost my virginity.”

On the hardest part of recording a vocal performance for an animated film:
“It’s very easy to come out and say funny lines that you’ve thought of the night before, but to be on story is the real challenge. So you’re in there for three hours trying to give them material they can actually use. I have a million jokes I could say, but to try to make it on story and valuable to them was something that was a challenge, and I really enjoyed that idea. It’s just you alone, which is kind of awesome — a lot of the time other actors really slow me down, because they’re not quite as good as me.”

On his most despicable moment, which happened while doing a promotional bit for Despicable Me:
“We got to play with the minions a bit, who I think are the cutest element to the movie. We did a little conga line with them. It was a bit awkward, because, to be honest, it’s midgets in outfits. And at one point I had to come up with something funny, and I said, ‘Hey, can I throw this ball off of your head and see if it bounces back to me?’ And one of the guys in the outfits said, ‘You’ve got to remember, I’m a real human being.’ And then I felt really awkward. That’s my worst moment. To date.”

On his celebrity nemesis:
“I think it’s probably Ryan Reynolds, in that we have very similar comedic tastes and all that, and our bodies are so [similar] that it’s basically a rivalry over who can be in better shape. At this point, I think I’m winning.”

The best advice he has on writing comedy:
“Write a drama. I’m not joking. That was the first advice I got from Judd Apatow, and I think it’s why his movies are so brilliant. He told me when I was writing Forgetting Sarah Marshall, ‘I want the first draft you give me to be a drama. We’ll make it funny. It’s going to be funny because we’re funny, and we’re going to add jokes, and the people you cast will be funny. The reason people will see it — and see it again and again or connect to it — is because there’s an underlying drama.’ So that’s the best advice I can give when you’re trying to write a comedy: first write a drama, and then make it funny.”

On his upcoming Muppets film:
“I’m very earnest about the way I approach it. There’s no sense of irony with me, going into The Muppets. I don’t think it’s funny that I’m doing The Muppets. I truly love them.”

On the scene that made him cry in Despicable Me:
“I cried at the end. I’m not a real cryer, but at the end of the movie, Gru — Steve Carell, who did his part to perfection — reads a story to these kids, and part of the theme is that even the coldest heart can be melted by love. That really got me. The movie is perfect.”

On the role that, years ago, he instantly knew he wasn’t going to get:
“When I was 18, I was allegedly really close to playing Dustin Hoffman’s son. I knew I wasn’t going to get that part. I’m like eight inches taller than Dustin Hoffman! I might be a foot taller than Dustin Hoffman. It just wasn’t going to happen. So it hindered me then, when I was playing a boy. Now that I’m playing a man, it’s a bit easier. Girls have heels. Dustin Hoffman in heels isn’t a good look.”

And a bonus one, just because:
“I think recycling is a myth – an Internet myth.” He was kidding, of course. I think. Listen for the voices of Steve Carell, Russell Brand, and Segel (in the body of a 5′ 3″, bespectacled nerd-villain) in Despicable Me, in theaters this week.