Just Jennifer

Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography (Crown Archetype, October 2014)

There are certain actors who will forever be a particular character they portrayed: Bob Denver will always be Gilligan, Henry Winkler, the Fonz, Barbara Eden Jeannie and Neil Patrick Harris will be forever in the hearts and minds of his fans Doogie Howser.  And he’s okay with that (pretty much).  Harris’s love of theatre and acting began when he played Toto in his older brother’s middle school production of The Wizard of Oz, disturbed by the fact that at times Toto ran on all fours but other times paraded around on his hind legs.  Encouraged by his middle school teachers, Harris was off and running and so was his career.  At sixteen he was cast by Steven Bochco as a medical genius who was still in high school.  And because he was still actually in high school, Harris’s first year on the set was punctuated by classes and chaperoned by his parents; once he was seventeen and no longer had restrictions, he was able to rent his own apartment and live the life of a young television star.  Doogie Howser ended when Harris was twenty and he made several movies, but was still enraptured by live theatre; he spent as much time going to Broadway shows as possible and even convinced his brother that $70 was better spent on a show than on a new sweater.  Harris also has a talent for magic and is able to play a broad range of characters from Tobias Ragg in Sweeney Todd to the Emcee in Cabaret.  He has hosted the Tony Awards four times and was brash enough to tell Nathan Lane that Harris thought a big finale COULD be done…and he did.  Unique in format, this biography may take a little getting used to.  Using the Choose Your Own Adventure format so popular in the 1980’s Harris allows the readers to choose the path his life will take.  It is worth going back and choosing the other path or even finally reading straight through.  Harris does not apologize (perhaps even exaggerates a bit) for his wilder life during his early twenties, and talks freely and with a fierce amount of love of his husband David Burtka and their two children twins, Gideon Scott and Harper Grace.  Don't pass up the instructions on the back cover of the book: a nifty trick continues Harris's playfulness and sly wit.  A bit tongue-in-cheek at times, Harris’s chosen format echoes the way he has chosen to live his life…one adventure at a time, willing to take a chance to see where that path will take him.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.