Noah Wyle
Noah Strausser Speer Wyle is an American actor and television director, producer and writer. He rose to fame as Dr. John Carter in the NBC medical drama ER, receiving five consecutive Emmy Award nominations, three consecutive Golden Globe Award nominations, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. He won two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award for his work on the HBO Max medical drama The Pitt, earning recognition both for his lead performance as Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch and as an executive producer.
Wyle is also known for his work on TNT, portraying Steve Jobs in the television film Pirates of Silicon Valley, Flynn Carsen in The Librarian franchise, and Tom Mason in the sci-fi series Falling Skies. He was nominated for a Critics' Choice Award for his performance in the CBS miniseries The Red Line. He was part of the ensemble cast of the Prime Video crime dramedy Leverage: Redemption. In addition to his television career, Wyle had supporting roles in films such as A Few Good Men, Donnie Darko, and Enough. He served as artistic producer of the Blank Theatre Company in Los Angeles for over 20 years.
Early life
Wyle was born at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Hollywood on June 4, 1971. His mother, Marjorie "Marty" Speer, worked as a nurse at East Hollywood's Kaiser Hospital. His father, Stephen Wyle, was an electrical engineer and entrepreneur. Wyle's paternal grandparents were prominent figures in Los Angeles; his grandfather, Frank Wyle, was a mechanical engineer who founded the aerospace company Wyle Laboratories and his grandmother, Edith R. Wyle, was a painter who established the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum. Wyle spent a lot of time as a child at his grandparents' 4,000-acre cattle ranch in North Fork, California and described his family as "half-city, half-country mice". Wyle's mother is Episcopalian and was raised in Kentucky. His father is Jewish; the Wyle surname was originally Weil and his ancestors were Ukrainian and Russian Jews. Wyle grew up feeling "culturally" Jewish but did not practice any religion.Wyle's parents divorced in 1977, when he was six years old, and both remarried. Wyle was "greatly influenced" by his stepparents; his stepmother, Deborah, was a teacher while his stepfather, James C. Katz, was a film preservationist and producer. In the 1980s, Katz worked as a senior executive at Universal Studios and a young Wyle worked in craft services on movie sets and appeared as an uncredited extra in Paul Bartel's Lust in the Dust. From his parents' marriage, Wyle has an older sister, Alexandra, and a younger brother, Aaron. He has a younger half-sister, Jessica, from his father's second marriage and three step-siblings from Katz's first marriage; Tabitha, Natasha and Matthew Frost were raised between the French Riviera and Los Angeles.
Wyle was educated at Gardner Street Elementary School in Hollywood and Oakwood School in North Hollywood. He then spent four years at The Thacher School, a preparatory boarding school in Ojai, California known for its compulsory horseback riding program. He struggled academically, particularly in math and science, and was placed on probation in his freshman year. He ultimately graduated with a "decent" GPA and later wondered whether undiagnosed mild ADHD had contributed to his difficulties. Wyle had always been "enamored" with show business growing up in Hollywood and he first acted on stage in his sophomore year at Thacher. Encouraged by the audience response, he went on to act in, write and direct school plays. He attended the Cherubs Theatre Arts program at Northwestern University in the summer of his junior year and returned to high school "really focused" on becoming a professional actor. He was the first person in his family "in generations" to not attend college.
Career
1990–94: Early roles and rise to fame on ''ER''
After graduating from high school in 1989, Wyle moved into an apartment on Hollywood Boulevard, signed with an agent and began taking acting classes. His parents were only willing to financially support a college education and he worked as a busboy and then waiter at the Bel Age Hotel's Diaghilev restaurant. He appeared in Los Angeles stage productions and made a one-line appearance in the NBC miniseries Blind Faith. His first credited movie role was in the family drama Crooked Hearts, with Peter Rainer of the Los Angeles Times remarking upon his "appealingly awe-struck innocence". He appeared as a Hitler Youth leader in the historical drama Swing Kids, as a high school student in the coming-of-age ensemble There Goes My Baby and as Lancelot in the Lifetime movie Guinevere. His most notable casting in this period was in the courtroom drama A Few Good Men, directed by Rob Reiner and written by Aaron Sorkin. Wyle had what Sorkin described as "a small, featured role as an endearingly dimwitted Marine corporal." The film was a box office success and was nominated for Best Picture at the 1993 Academy Awards.At the age of 22, Wyle was focused on appearing in "movies and plays" but was persuaded by his agent to audition for the television pilot of an NBC medical drama called ER, created by Michael Crichton and executive-produced by Steven Spielberg. The character of medical student John Carter was initially conceived of as comic relief and the casting director was impressed by Wyle's facility for "physical comedy" during the audition process. Wyle himself felt a personal connection: "I identified with him being born with a silver spoon in his mouth and it never quite fitting." After filming the ER pilot, Wyle auditioned for the part of Ross Geller in another NBC pilot, Friends; producers wanted him to film a screen test for the network but had to first wait to see whether ER would get picked up for a full season. ER tested highly with audiences, was ordered for a full season and began airing on September 19, 1994. In an early review, Tom Shales of the Washington Post described Carter as the "point of entry" character and praised Wyle's "achingly ingenuous performance as the young doctor-to-be." Within weeks, ER became the second most-watched show on television after Seinfeld. The main cast - Wyle, Anthony Edwards, George Clooney, Eriq La Salle, Sherry Stringfield and Julianna Margulies - rose to fame and Wyle, the youngest ensemble member, later credited the others as "role models... I feel very fortunate to have started exactly when I did in the company of those actors. They taught me an incredible amount."
1995–2005: Continued ''ER'' success
ER was a cultural phenomenon and is now considered one of the all-time greatest television shows. It was the most-watched show in television for three years - in its second, third and fifth seasons - and average viewing figures often exceeded 30 million. At its peak, the show attracted 47.8 million viewers. Wyle and Clooney guest-starred as doctors in an episode of Friends and Wyle played an exaggerated version of himself in the sitcom The Larry Sanders Show, sharing scenes with Mandy Patinkin, a family friend. He appeared as a doctor in Sesame Street and as a veterinarian in a Margulies-hosted episode of Saturday Night Live. For his performance in ER, Wyle was nominated for five consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series and three consecutive Golden Globe Awards for Best Supporting Actor. As part of the ensemble cast, he won four Screen Actors Guild Awards, with a further three nominations. By 2001, Wyle had become one of the highest-paid actors in history for a television drama, earning an estimated $9 million per season.In between seasons of ER, Wyle continued to do film work. He was offered parts in Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck but was unable to accept either due to ERs nine-month filming schedule. He starred in the independent family drama The Myth of Fingerprints and made a cameo in the comedy Can't Stop Dancing. He portrayed Steve Jobs in TNT's Pirates of Silicon Valley, which was filmed concurrently with ER. Wyle was apprehensive about the role until he watched the documentary Triumph of the Nerds and then "knew I'd kick myself for the rest of my life if I didn't play this part." Caryn James of The New York Times said the role was "savvily" played while Steve Silberman of Wired found the resemblance "uncanny" and noted that the actor "nails Steve Jobs' body language." Jobs himself considered the television movie "brutal" and "mean-spirited": "But as an actor, Noah Wyle definitely had done his homework on me in terms of my mannerisms and my quirks. So I called him the next day, just to tell him I thought he did a nice job." At Jobs' invitation, Wyle addressed the 1999 NY Macworld Expo audience in character. He then had a series of supporting roles; playing the President's interpreter in the televised broadcast play Fail Safe, a science teacher in the thriller Donnie Darko, a mob enforcer in Scenes of the Crime, an unsupportive husband in White Oleander and a corrupt police officer in Enough. Wyle had starring roles in the TNT adventure movie The Librarian: Quest for the Spear and the independent drama The Californians.
During his time on ER, Wyle remained involved with the Los Angeles-based Blank Theatre Company, where he had first worked as a teenage actor. He starred in the 1995 production of The 24th Day at the Coronet Theatre. In 1997, he became the company's artistic producer. His leadership role involved "constant fundraising" and "grant writing"; he personally donated the money for the acquisition of the 2nd Stage Theatre premises. Over the years, he acted in many entries for the annual Young Playwrights Festival, describing the experience as one of the "most gratifying" of his career. For his work as a producer of The Wild Party in 2005, he won an NAACP Theatre Award.
In 2005, in ERs eleventh season, Wyle became the final cast member from the original ensemble to leave. Following the birth of his first child in late 2002, he had taken extended paternity leave. However, he ultimately found the gruelling work schedule incompatible with "the kind of parent I want to be": "I’ve always said about our show that there’s really no point in leaving unless you’re ready to change your life. You can’t find better material or work with nicer people or a better crew." In reviewing his final episode, Matt Zoller Seitz of the Star-Ledger described Wyle as the "heart and soul of ER" and praised a performance "without a false note": "Even when the show's plot contrivances were laughable, you took John Carter seriously, because Wyle's performance demanded it... Together with the show's writing staff, chiefly executive producer John Wells, who wrote some of Carter's best scenes, Wyle gave the character an emotional, intellectual and philosophical consistency, and a depth that let us deduce what he was thinking and feeling even when he wasn't speaking."
Wyle returned in 2006 to guest star in four episodes of the twelfth season and again in 2009 for five episodes of the show's fifteenth and final season, including the series finale. By the end of the show's run, he had appeared in 254 episodes, more than any other major cast member. Wyle later said he never felt "pigeonholed" by Carter: "If I'd stayed being the comic relief character who was always screwing up, that may have been frustrating but he kept growing as I kept growing." Wyle regularly cited Alan Alda - who portrayed a doctor for eleven seasons on M*A*S*H and later guest-starred on ER - as a source of inspiration. He described Alda as "a hero to me as a kid, and he still is... He is the model I have in my head of an actor who's had a really beautiful career but for the most part is identified with one role. That doesn't scare me when I think about it in those terms."