Why Being Cast In Starship Troopers Felt Like A Big Deal To Neil Patrick Harris
By Ava Barnes
Neil Patrick Harris talked about the role while discussing his career with GQ (via YouTube). Harris explained that he was excited to get the role because at the time, he was pigeonholed into being a TV actor thanks to his work on "Doogie Howser, M.D."
"Back in the mid-90's, when you were an actor on television, you weren't welcomed into the world of film. And in turn, if you were a film actor, you weren't really welcomed into the world of television. They were very separate beasts," Harris said. "So, having done a TV show at a relatively young age, I kept trying to be in movies. But I was just a TV person, which is fine. You hope you can pull a Sally Field and stick around long enough that the rules change."
Unfortunately for Harris, his role in "Starship Troopers" wasn't quite the game-changer for his career that he hoped it would be. While he did have small roles in subsequent films like "The Proposition" and "The Next Best Thing," he mostly worked in television until 2004. That was when Harris' cameo in "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" proved that he could do much edgier fare than he was previously known for. The following year he was cast as the gleeful lothario Barney Stinson on "How I Met Your Mother."
Harris' film career never quite took off, however. After "Starship Troopers," his next major role in a dramatic movie came in 2014, when he was cast as Desi Collins in "Gone Girl." Still, Neil Patrick Harris has had a career that most actors would envy.
