Crushing

There is an actor that I have been crushing on recently. It's one of those things that you know is never going to happen in a million years, but you do anyway - the Googling, the IMDBing, the YouTube stalking. So who has my attention been focussed on? None other but Neil Patrick Harris.

For those of you who aren't sure who Neil Patrick Harris is, you may recognise him as Barney from How I Met Yout Mother. In the series, he plays a chauvinistic man whore with a fetish for suits and a love of high-fives and lazer tag. Not exactly the kind of character that you develop a crush on if you have any sense of dignity. And for the first few seasons of the series, I wasn't impressed. Sure, I giggled at his one-liners, but I winced at his ridiculous strategies and certainly wouldn't have said that he was my favourite character.

And then I found out something about Neil Patrick Harris, something that changed everything, something that changed the way that I saw him and the way that I saw his character. I found out that NPH is gay. Suddenly, watching Barney hitting on women seemed hilarious, watching him being a chauvinistic pig became ironic.

From that moment onwards, my man crush started developing. I started looking him up on IMDB to see what I could expect to see him in. When I heard of a movie that he was in, I was sure to see it, and I was guaranteed to enjoy it. One of my favourite NPH movies is actually the mini-musical Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog, where he plays a super villain who is in love with the hero's girlfriend. Hilarious, heart warming, upbeat and heart wrenching - I cannot watch the movie often enough, and the fact that it is 42 minutes long means that I really can! I even have the soundtrack on my computer.

But NPH hasn't starred in anything but How I Met Your Mother in awhile, and I have been way behind on episodes. So why have I been crushing on him so much recently?

NPH hosted the Tony Awards a couple of weeks ago, and videos of the event have been spreading over the web ever since. The videos are awesome, and definitely worth a watch, so I thought that I would post them here for everyone to see. I realise that some of you will not share in my man crush for Neil Patrick Harris, but I think everyone should be able to appreciate the comedy in these two skits - the first one the opening sequence for the show and the second a duet with Hugh Jackman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6S5caRGpK4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkSpdvmXwDo

Now, a couple of weeks back I wrote a movie review for one of Jackman's movies, saying that he was pretty much only good for looking at (the Prestige aside). But watching this video of him with NPH, I think that I completely underestimated him. Take a gander and see for yourself.

My question for today - Who is YOUR celebrity crush at the moment?