Neil Patrick Harris Lets it all Hang Out

What does out actor Neil Patrick Harris think about something? Lately, he’ll tell you — in sometimes eyebrow raising detail. Consider the last month and a half:

• Harris talked to Hollywood Reporter about his coming out, joking at one point, "I made out with Cobie Smulders last week on the show, and when I watched it, I got an erection. And she's a chick, you know what I'm saying?"

• He appeared on The Howard Stern Show, where he revealed intimate details of his sex life, telling Howard when and how he lost his virginity, that he slept with 12-15 women before accepting his gayness, and that he and partner David Burtka are monogamous and versatile.

• When Britney Spears guest-starred on Harris’ sitcom How I Met Your Mother, he was surprisingly blunt to E! about how it came to be, saying, “It gets the name How I Met Your Mother out more, which I think is important, but it should be clear, and I hope you state this, Britney's camp came entirely to us with the idea of it, and in fact, we all thought it was a joke.” He was just as frank to an AP reporter, saying, among other things, “I worry that if they start 'Will and Gracing' us too much, that the show will suffer.” This caused such an outcry that Harris had to issue a statement saying he’d been misquoted and that, “Britney did a great job on the show.” The AP stood by their story.

Harris first came to widespread fame in 1989 as the 16-year-old star of Doogie Howser M.D., an ABC “dramedy” about a child genius who becomes a doctor. The role brought Harris enormous success, but cemented his public image as a sensitive, somewhat nerdy prodigy.

In the early 00s, Harris made what seemed to be a concerted effort to break out of the typecasting caused by Doogie Howser with a successful turn as the lecherous Emcee in a Broadway revival of Cabaret, and in an attention-getting cameo as a drug-addled, horny-heterosexual version of himself (he wasn’t yet out publicly) in the 2004 movie Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.

“I did a whole slew of made-for-TV telefilms where I was a serial arsonist, I hacked up my parents with a wood maul,” Harris told the NPR radio show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! “Good times.”

In 2005, Harris took the role of Barney Stinson, an amoral womanizer, on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother. The character was enormously popular and revolutionized his career, landing him a 2007 Emmy and People’s Choice Award nominations.

Josh Radnor (left) & Harris in How I Met Your Mother

In November of 2006, after some Internet writers began speculating on his sexuality, he came out in a statement to People, saying, “I am happy to dispel any rumors or misconceptions and am quite proud to say that I am a very content gay man.”

Next page! What Bruce Vilanch says about Neil!