For a moment there, I thought it would be an impossible feat to completely break away from the old Doogie Howser, M.D. stereotype. But Neil Patrick Harris did manage to do so, and so much more.

In recent years, Neil Patrick Harris has come up with some very memorable characters. My personal favorites:

• As chronic womanizer, shady character, and metrosexual Barney Stinson, on the CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother.
• As a parody of himself in Harold and Kumar Goes To White Castle (2004) and again in Harold and Kumar Escapes From Guantanamo Bay (2008).
• More recently as Dr. Horrible/Billy on the Joss Whedon internet musical "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog".

• While he might be an amateur magician, he's still a huge magic fan, and sits on the Board of Director's of Hollywood's Magic Castle. NPH has even performed magic tricks on Johnny Carson (The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson), Letterman (Late Show with David Letterman), Leno (The Tonight Show with Jay Leno) and Ellen (The Ellen DeGeneres Show).
• He and Freddie Prinze, Jr. attended the same high school.
• NPH is an accomplished theater actor. He's perfomed as Mark in Rent at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles to rave reviews, and made his Broadway debut in 2002 in Proof with Anne Heche. So, yes, he can really sing, as well as act.
• He's a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, or MST3K.
• Neil Patrick Harris also does cartoon voiceovers: he's voiced The Flash in the direct-to-DVD DC animated project Justice League: The New Frontier (2008), and as Peter Parker/Spider-man in Spider-Man: The New Animated Series (2003).