Neil Patrick Harris Gives Hollywood Advice in Entertainment Weekly

Broadway favorite Neil Patrick Harris is featured in this week's edition of Entertainment Weekly, where he gives his own list of Hollywood survival advicE. Harris writes, 'I was very musical at a young age. So much so that Churchill Cooke, our elementary school band and choir director, let me teach parts in the choir when I was in the fourth grade. First I played the xylophone, then marimba, cymbals, French horn, bassoon - I became a sort of jack-of-all-trades. It's a mindset that I think never really left me. Mr. Cooke would say, "We need an oboe part for this piece, Neil. Learn oboe." And I would say, "Sure, Mr. Cooke. Who needs friends?"'

He added: 'It's good to have a lot of once-in-a-lifetimes in your lifetime. If you get the chance to skydive, go skydiving. If you're offered a part in a weird Shakespeare play in San Diego, slap on some tights and rock out some iambic pentameter. If you're offered the opportunity to have a swastika painted on your ass, glitter on your nipples, and to simulate sex with a man and a woman behind a curtain, go for it... provided it's Cabaret on Broadway and not in some dude's basement.'

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Neil Patrick Harris currently stars as Barney Stinson in the hit CBS series, "How I Met Your Mother," a role which has garnered him multiple Emmy and Golden Globe Award nominations, as well as a People's Choice Award for Favorite TV Comedy Actor. Harris recently tackled the leading role of Bobby in the New York Philharmonic's concert production of Stephen Sondheim's Company at Lincoln Center.

Subsequently, Harris also starred on Broadway as the Emcee in Cabaret, and as The Balladeer/Lee Harvey Oswald in the Tony Award-winning production of Assassins. His additional theatrical credits include roles in All My Sons, Tick, Tick...Boom, The Paris Letter, Sweeney Todd, Rent, and Romeo and Juliet. Harris made his theatrical directorial debut with I Am Grock at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood, and he recently helmed a production of Jonathan Larson's Rent at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.