Neil Patrick Harris on his 1st big role in the largely forgotten 'Clara's Heart' with 'icon' Whoopi Goldberg: 'It was an absolute game-changer'

You’d be forgiven if you thought Neil Patrick Harris launched his career as Doogie Howser, M.D., the whip-smart teen doctor he played on the eponymous ABC sitcom for four seasons, from 1989 to 1993.

But before tending to ruptured appendixes and operating on the occasional dog, it was another, largely forgotten project that put the young New Mexico native on the map in Hollywood.

A year before NPH debuted on Doogie, he co-starred in the drama Clara’s Heart opposite another legen — wait for it — dary actor: Whoopi Goldberg. (The film opened in theaters 35 years ago, on Oct. 7, 1988.

“I mean, Whoopi Goldberg is an absolute icon,” Harris, now 50, tells us during a recent, pre-strike Role Recall interview about the stand-up comedian-turned-EGOT-winning star of Color Purple, Ghost and Sister Act who now holds down co-hosting duties on The View. “She has persevered through almost as many chapters as Madonna, and she’s always been truthful and authentic to herself.

“And so when I was an unknown kid in tiny town, middle of nowhere, New Mexico, and then was asked through circumstance, which would take a long time to explain, to be in a movie opposite her as one of the leads, [it] was cray-cray, which I think is a term that kids use today.”

Harris was cast as David Hart, whose upper-class family recruits a Jamaican hotel maid Clara Mayfield (Goldberg) to come to their Baltimore lakefront estate as their live-in housekeeper. When David’s parents separate, he forms a close bond with Clara, and soon discovers her tragic past.

“It was an absolute game-changer,” Harris says. “I had no real inclination to be in the entertainment industry outside of loving the musical revues in theme park shows. I had never been to New York, or seen a Broadway show. I was just fairly precocious and didn't have much fear acting in front of people.

“And so then all of a sudden I’m in Baltimore, Maryland, [and] St. Michaels, Maryland, learning what a camera is on a dolly track and what marks are that you're supposed to hit and how lights work. And it was such an education. And to get to do that on such a high level, a Warner Bros. feature film opposite Whoopi Goldberg, who’s an amazing human. … She treated me like a person, not a child. She educated me about so many things with such dignity and class. It was one hell of a way to start working.”

Harris earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his screen debut. (The award ultimately went to Tucker: The Man and His Dream actor Martin Landau.)

Shortly after, ABC cast him in Doogie Howser, M.D., which, as Harris might say, was a next-level game-changer.