Neil Patrick Harris (born June 15, 1973) is an American actor. Prominent roles of his career include the title role in Doogie Howser, M.D., the womanizing Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother and a fictionalized version of himself in the Harold & Kumar series. He also hosted the 63rd Tony Awards on June 7, 2009, and the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards on September 20, 2009.

Harris was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and grew up in Ruidoso, New Mexico. His parents, Sheila and Ron, ran a restaurant. He has an older brother named Brian, and it was by following his brother to an audition in fourth grade that he first began acting—as Toto in a school production of The Wizard of Oz. He attended La Cueva High School in Albuquerque and was active in school plays and musicals there. Harris was an honors student and graduated with honors in 1991. He was three years ahead of fellow La Cueva student, Freddie Prinze, Jr.

Harris began his career as a child actor, and was discovered by playwright Mark Medoff at a Drama Camp in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Medoff cast him in his 1988 film Clara's Heart, a drama with Whoopi Goldberg based on the novel (of the same name) by Joseph Olshan, that won him a Golden Globe nomination. In 1988, he also starred in Purple People Eater, a children's fantasy. The following year, he won the lead in Doogie Howser, M.D., for which he was again nominated for a Golden Globe. After Doogie Howser's four-season run ended in 1993, Harris played a number of guest roles on television series, before taking his first film role as an adult in 1995 in the little-seen shocker Animal Room. Since then, his film work has included supporting roles in The Next Best Thing, Undercover Brother and Starship Troopers. In the Harold and Kumar stoner comedy films, (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay) he plays a drug-crazed, lecherous version of himself.