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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The group of people you're working with — Alyson Hannigan from Buffy, Jason Segel from Freaks and Geeks — do you vets have a responsibility to help Josh Radnor and Cobie Smulders, the newbies, keep up?
NEIL PATRICK HARRIS: I think we had thicker skins, because we have sort of war wounds, more than Josh and Cobie. They were fresh-faced. I just think in this business it's easy to take things personally, so the whole idea of faces on billboards and interviews with magazines and soundbites on Entertainment Tonight is hard to process if you haven't done it before.

Do you have a moment from your teenage years when you realized what you gotten yourself into?
I was in a movie called Clara's Heart with Whoopi Goldberg as a little kid, and we flew in from New Mexico to go to a screening of it, and drove by the Warner Bros. lot where they have those big giant billboards, and there was a big giant billboard for Clara's Heart and my face was there. That was a pretty awesome experience. It sort of makes you go all quiet when you see that. At least coming from tiny town New Mexico. It's a pretty daunting thing.

But so then are you like, ''Well, this is it! This is my life as a movie star! I've made it!''
I guess one of the beauties of Doogie was there was never a sense of, ''Ya made it, kid! You're a stah!'' We were working, like, all the time. And when I wasn't working, I was back in Albuquerque going to school. So I got to avoid the Teen Beat years.

I may have had a couple magazines with you in them.
I did a couple of those. And it sucked my soul away.

Why?
It was like pancake makeup and a bright blue backdrop, and you holding a soccer ball. On a chair. And, like, smiling. Oh, it was just horrible.

But surely there are a number of people who would have really enjoyed that.
I was a late-bloomer kid with acne. I didn't feel like a studly River Phoenix [type of] dude that was getting all the chicks. I was this little kid who was on a TV show. So to have posters of me... it seemed so odd.

So you weren't acting as Doogie, is what you're telling me.
Was he a dweeb?

He was kind of a dweeb.
He was kind of cool, though. He had a hot girlfriend from the beginning.

And Wanda's one of those defining TV girlfriends. Her and Winnie Cooper.
It's true. The Ws.

He was still kinda dorky though.
He did wear the piano tie. That's a bad sign.

NEXT PAGE: Returning to TV, career advice from Penn and Teller, and the influence of Harold and Kumar


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