Neil Patrick Harris

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

  1. Matthew Perry, Friends, TV, 1994-2004.      
  2. Lukas Haas, The Thin Red Line, 1998.  Numerous stars – Cage, Clooney, Costner,  Depp,  DiCaprio, McConaughey, Pacino, Pitt,  etc –  collided over themselves to offer their services (even for free) for wizard auteur Terrence Malick’s first movie since Days of Heaven…  21 years before!   Haas (the kid Witness in  the 1984 Harrison Ford-Kelly McGllis thriller) was part of the famous March 1995 reading of the scenario at producer Mike Medavoy’s house. Also taking part: Kevin Costner, Ethan Hawke, Dermot Mulroney and Martin Sheen (from Malick’s 1972 Badlands). Haas landed on the cuttingroom floor. Along with Viggo Mortensen, Gary Oldman, Jason Patric, Bill Pullman, Mickey Rourke, Martin Sheen! 
  3. Will Friedle, Kim Possible, TV, 2002-2007.    The ex-Doogie Howser MD (TV,1989-1993) tested to voice Kim’s sidekick, Ron Stoppable. 
In 2003, he voiced Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, in 2005, he won his own adult series, How I Met Your Mother and by 2009, he was hosting the 61st Emmy Awards show.
  4. Sean Maher, Firefly, TV, 2002-2003.    According to Entertainment Weekly (in July 2008), Harris auditioned for the 2517 AD trauma surgeon Dr Simon Tam in Joss Whedon’s short-lived sf creation. It bred, however, the 2005 movie, Serenity.
  5. Alan Cumming, X2, 2002.   Director Bryan Singer’s first and only choice for Nightcrawler/Kurt Wagnerin the first X-Mensequel was the Scottish Cumming. When  he was unavailable, the director saw Ethan Embry and NPH, TV’s, teen doctor, Doogie Howser, MD, TV, 1989-1993, and star of Broadway’s Rent star. NPH, like Cumming, had appeared on-stage in Cabaret. He later  become the titular voice of Spider-Man TV animation series.With  a bound, Cumming was finally  free. Chuck Austen, the main Nightcrawler writer, has revealed that just as the character has two fingers on each hand, two toes on each foot, he also has… two sets of genitals.
  6. Bill Hader, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 2008.  Offered the unlikely toon hero, Flint Lockwood, the unlikely toon hero, Flint Lockwood, NPH was more interested in Steve… Flint’s, er, talking monkey! Takes all sorts. The 3D toon was based on of the 80s’ kids’ book about food falling from the sky like rain. Indeed, a banana hit the Columbia Torch Lady and knocked her off the screen in the opening credits. 
  7. Steve Zahn, The Good Dinosaur, 2009.   The one that got away….  The role. And the film. Only Frances McDormand of the original voice cast survived a ton of necessary changes in the toon that began in 2009, was continually respun, only titled in 2014, and finally released with Zahn taking over the pterodactyl Thunderclap. By then it was much better, of course. Just not up to Pixar’s usual skyscraper-high standards.
  8. Zachary Quinto, American Horror Story,  #4: Halloween, Part 2,TV, 2011.   For his horror anthology series, producer Ryan Murphy asked the married Harris and David Burtka to be the squabbling interior designer couple, Chad and Patrick. They declined as the idea was typecasting their guest roles in A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas that year and they didn’t want viewers to think they were a troubled pair. They co-starred in the fourth season’s Neil’s Puppet Dreams   about NPH dreaming in puppets in 2012.
  9. James Corden, Into The Woods, 2013.

 

 

 

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