The news that Neil Patrick Harris will host next year’s Oscars will put the actor and performer in front of one of the biggest global audiences out there. But it’s only the latest chapter in a long and varied career that seems to go from strength to strength. So what has NPH done? Let’s find out …
Poppet medic
Harris’s breakthrough role was as teenaged physician Doogie Howser, MD on the 1989-1993 sitcom of the same name. In this episode, Doogie becomes in-house health advisor for an MTV-style channel – cue buzz-killing lectures on sex and booze, a montage set to David Bowie’s Fame and NPH as Mrs Doubtfire avant la lettre.
Super trooper
After Doogie, Harris took on a variety of stage and screen roles, sometimes playing distinctly shifty characters. A case in point is Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (1997), a gnarly satire of US imperialism disguised as teen SF schlock. Harris’s character, Carl, starts out as the brainy member of a high-school clique but gradually morphs into an SS-style fascist technocrat.
Sleazing up
Still, Harris didn’t shake off Doogie’s goody-two-shoes vibe until 2004, when he took a cameo playing himself as a sleazeball in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (released in the UK as Harold & Kumar Get the Munchies). His tongue-in-cheek reinvention as a stone cold bro obsessed with sex and drugs set the stage for Harris’s primetime comeback.
Heterospecial
It was as Barney Stinson in the post-Friends sitcom How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014) that Harris cemented his return to stardom. As the suit-loving, catchphrase-touting pick-up artist with a heart of gold, he became a fan favourite on one of America’s top-rated shows. His popularity was unchanged when Harris came out as gay in 2006.
Dr Horrible
The internet has long been a friend of Harris’s, from fan sites that kept the fires burning to the millions who now follow him on Twitter. He repaid the love in Joss Whedon’s 2008 web series Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a tongue-in-cheek musical in which Harris’s aspiring supervillain has to deal with chores and heartbreak.
Broadway beckons
Dr Horrible was far from Harris’s only experience with showtunes. He appeared on stage as the Emcee in Cabaret and in several Stephen Sondheim shows, and performed musical numbers in How I Met Your Mother, Glee and – most deliriously – in the cartoon series Batman: The Brave and the Bold. In 2009, he voiced the Music Meister, a villain who forced everyone to speak in song.
Host with the most
That year also saw Harris establish his award-show prowess, appearing at the Tony and Emmy ceremonies. He has hosted both events since then, but his most memorable award-show moment remains his song about the widening appeal of Broadway at the 2011 Tonys: “We’re asking every hetero/ To get to know us better, oh,/ It’s not just for gays any more!”
American sweetheart
Harris has national sweetheart status in the US, not least because he is perceived to be an all-round nice guy. This quality came to the fore during a spot as a guest judge on American Idol. Sure, Harris’s “clash” with Simon Cowell was over-egged, but the sentiment – “thank God for Neil Patrick Harris!” – said something real about his appeal.
Column inches
After How I Met Your Mother ended its run earlier this year, Harris was ready for a break from the strictures of a weekly network show, but not from performing. He hit the Broadway stage, starring in queer musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and became the toast of New York. This performance from the Tony awards shows why.
Octopus and scrabble
Not that Harris has left the screen behind. He can currently be seen in David Fincher’s hit Gone Girl. The movie is pretty much a two-hander between Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike but Harris makes an impression in his role as supercreep Desi Collings. Will he be receiving an Oscar one day instead of dishing them out?
• Interview: Neil Patrick Harris talks to Ben Walters about Gone Girl
