Part of Child Stars, All Grown Up featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jodie Foster, and How I Met Your Mother with Josh Radnor and Jason Segel.
Rise to Fame
He was a literal teenager playing a teenage doctor, which made Doogie Howser, M.D. either a perfect casting decision or a minor miracle. The show ran four seasons and made him a household name by 18. What followed was the usual child-star trap: typecast, passed over, briefly forgotten. The real reset came in 2004 when he played a drug-fueled, self-parodying version of himself in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. How I Met Your Mother locked it in. Nine seasons as Barney Stinson made him one of the most reliably charming performers on television.
In the Spotlight
He came out as gay in 2006, mid-HIMYM, which made him the rare openly gay actor playing a womanizing straight man for eight more seasons without anyone seeming to care. The gamble on hosting worked for years: four Tony ceremonies, the Emmys twice. The 2015 Oscars went badly. Viewership dropped 16% to 36.6 million, the lowest in six years, and the reviews were rough. Uncoupled on Netflix got canceled after one season and a near-revival at Showtime collapsed before filming. He won a Tony for Hedwig and the Angry Inch in 2014, which remains his clearest proof that the stage is where he's most himself.
Side Notes
He goes by all three names because Neil Harris was already registered at SAG when he joined, which is the most mundane possible origin story for a triple-barreled stage name. The magic thing isn't a sideshow: he served as president of the board of the Magic Castle in Hollywood from 2011 to 2014 and has reportedly been performing magic on talk shows since he was a kid. His memoir is written entirely in second person, formatted as a Choose Your Own Adventure book. It's the kind of gimmick that only works if you have enough self-awareness to pull it off, and he does.