Solid piece on Neil Patrick Harris (about his stint in Kumar movie, etc) from the NYTIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/arts/tel...15a8b13&ei=5070
April 16, 2006
Television
Neil Patrick Harris's Recent Roles Are a Far Cry From Doogie Howser
By MARGY ROCHLIN
Westwood, Calif.
LAST year Neil Patrick Harris, who likes to move among television, film and stage, starred in a production of Jon Robin Baitz's "Paris Letter" at the Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City, Calif. The role required him, among other things, to act without any clothes on. "It was terrifying — horrible, horrible, horrible," he recalled, "and then somehow it was fine."
Mr. Harris has some experience overcoming exposure. When he was a formless 16-year-old he landed a starring role in the ABC drama "Doogie Howser, M.D."; when the hit show ended, four years later, he was a lanky teen star with conflicted notions about having his adolescence recorded on film. "When you age in front of the camera, you can't help but be hyper-conscious about what people think of your big Adam's apple, acne, big ears," he said. "When you become an adult, you have to figure out how to conquer that. So my body issues I had growing up feeling gawky and awkward were really put to the test."
Currently, Mr. Harris can be seen as Barney Stinson on the CBS comedy "How I Met Your Mother." In it, Mr. Harris's Barney is a big-mouthed anomaly amid a close-knit group of earnest 20-somethings living in Manhattan. While they shuffle around in Gap wear, Barney cuts a junior Rat Pack figure in tie, crisp dress shirt and Hugo Boss suit. If it is romance and commitment that his pals long for, Barney's quest is for one-nighters — hopefully involving multiple partners, outrageous lies and the forgetting of names — that might yield a crazy story to later brag about to his friends. In the hands of a lesser actor, Barney might seem too oily for that crowd. But Mr. Harris pulls off "a juggling act of being lovable and toxically awful at the same time," in the words of his co-star Josh Radnor.
"Playing Barney is a bit of sleight of hand," said Mr. Radnor, who plays the sweetly neurotic Ted. "For whatever reason, Neil has the ability to say these lines without the characters or the audience wanting to punch him in the face."
When the "Friends"-like ensemble comedy made its debut last September, the critics were won over, too. In The Boston Globe, a reviewer wrote, "Harris may be something of a surprise to a viewer used to seeing him as Doogie Howser," while The New York Daily News pronounced that Mr. Harris "steals this show, and owns it, the way Christopher Lloyd made the most of every scenes as Rev. Jim in 'Taxi.' "
That praise has been especially gratifying for Mr. Harris, since he didn't agonize over getting the part. "There's lots of jobs that you audition for thinking you're just perfect, that there's no one else who could do the part but you," said Mr. Harris, who remembered breezing into the casting room and proceeding to bounce around. "But Barney? I never thought I'd get the job, so I went in without giving it much care. I did a dive roll. I slammed into their desk. I was pretty insane."
Whether those hiring the actors for "How I Met Your Mother" knew it or not, spontaneous gymnastics are only part of Mr. Harris's arsenal. While growing up in the small town of Ruidoso, N.M., Mr. Harris, the youngest son of two lawyers, learned to sing in the choir of his Episcopal church and found that he could pick his way through a tune on the xylophone, bass clarinet, French horn, oboe and tuba. Beyond that he became an expert juggler; once, he helped saw a woman into thirds on the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, and these days is working on his double back flip on the trapeze.
"I take to things pretty easily, but I don't take time to master them," he said. "I'm a magic and variety-arts fan — I love sword swallowing, glass walking, plate spinning, all that stuff."
He made his Broadway debut as the math nerd boyfriend in "Proof" in 2002, played the sexually ambiguous emcee in the Roundabout Theater Company's "Cabaret" in 2003 and his stint as Toby in a Los Angeles production of "Sweeney Todd" impressed Stephen Sondheim enough that he had Mr. Harris repeat the role at Lincoln Center, which led to the role of Lee Harvey Oswald in a 2004 revival of Mr. Sondheim's "Assassins." But one of the first things Mr. Harris learned 13 years ago after his first series was canceled, was that in network television, his only use was as a semi-name who could fill the blond-haired, baby-faced do-gooder slot in long-form television movies.
"I was only getting jobs I was offered, not the ones I was auditioning for, because I had previous baggage," said Mr. Harris, who in the now-what? phase of his life relocated from Los Angeles to remote Placitas, N.M. Still, he's not bitter: "When you're an adolescent," he said, "you want to redefine yourself. But I'm 32 and now appreciate the uniqueness of that whole chapter," said Mr. Harris, who never knows what to say when people tiptoe gingerly around the topic. "When I talk about 'Doogie Howser,' everyone sort of cowers like I loathe the past I've had. Which is entirely not the case."
One step Mr. Harris has taken toward correcting this misperception was to appear in a feature film called "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle." In it, two affable stoners pick up a hitchhiker who turns out to be a car-stealing, stripper-loving, Ecstasy-fueled former child actor named Neil Patrick Harris. The character is what Jon Hurwitz, who wrote the screenplay with Hayden Schlossberg, described in a telephone interview as "an alternate-universe version" of Mr. Harris. "When we were writing it, we were hopeful he'd understand it wasn't a Gary Coleman part, that the joke wasn't at his expense," said Mr. Hurwitz, adding that if Mr. Harris said no, their second choice was Ralph Macchio, the former "Karate Kid."
These days, Mr. Harris is preparing to play the lead in Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" at the Geffen Playhouse. While eating soup in a Westwood delicatessen, he had a case of the nerves. This time, however, they were about getting a new role right, not finessing an image of Neil Patrick Harris. He was, he said, in "that flop-sweaty" stage of character exploration when "everything I do is bad."
"My voice is bad, my smile is bad, my posture is bad, everything I do is bad," he said.
At that moment, his thoughts turned to the liberating pleasure of playing Barney, who is all id. "In that job, all I'm really looking for is takes, whether they be triple or spit," said Mr. Harris, wistfully. "I don't wonder where Barney threw up last night or who his parents are. I just make bold choices and hope they stick."
For some stupid reason I thought Robin was their mother.
Smoo is so going to kill you.
