10 Actors Who Made Comebacks In INSANE Movies

Neil Patrick Harris rose to fame in the late 1980s and early '90s as the star of hit sitcom Doogie Howser, M.D., though in the decade that followed, he struggled to translate that success onto the big screen, beyond a memorable appearance in Starship Troopers.

But Harris' fortunes turned around in 2004 when he played a hilariously fictionalised version of himself in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle - a drug-taking, irrepressibly horny degenerate who couldn't be any further from the wholesome young doctor Harris played years prior.

Harris' scene-stealing performance was widely praised, enough that when he went to audition for the character of Barney Stinson in sitcom How I Met Your Mother the next year, the casting agent informed him that the show's creators had seen Harold and Kumar.

And so, it's not a leap to suggest that, without Harold and Kumar helping reinvent the public perception of Harris, he almost certainly wouldn't have landed his career-redefining role.

Amusingly, Harold and Kumar's script was written with Harris in mind, but if he turned the part down, the filmmakers' backup was Karate Kid star Ralph Macchio, who had to wait a little while longer for his own comeback in Karate Kid spin-off series Cobra Kai.