The Elle Interview 'You know', an attractive girl says to Noah Wyle, aka Dr John Carter from the hit medical TV drama ER, 'my back has been giving me a lot of trouble lately. Could you possibly diagnose the problem?' ' Of course I can,' the young star replies gallantly as he rises from his seat on the patio of a trendy Italian restaurant. ' Here, tell me if this causes you any pain.' He places both of his hands at the top of her spine, gently moving them downwards until she arches her back and... And... And we realise that such a thing has never, will never, can never occur. Sure it's a cliché, but let's say it together shall we? 'Noah Wyle is not a real doctor. He just plays one on TV.' Not that this reminder will stop anyone from assuming - no, hoping - that Wyle will indulge in a little doctor/patient consultation. ' For some people, it's a convenient ice-breaker to introduce themselves by coming up with a complaint,' says Wyle, ' You know, "my kidneys feel..." And a lot of people assume I did some sort of medical training to do the show, the way Charlie Sheen went to boot camp before he did Platoon. It's totally not true.' So the above is pure fantasy. Well, almost. This afternoon Wyle is actually sitting on the patio of a trendy Italian restaurant called Louise's Trattoria, in Los Feliz, Los Angeles - sans doctor's white coat and stethoscope. The attractive woman who approaches him is the waitress, Jodi. Wyle knows her because she was once an extra on ER. Maybe Jodi is a good actress. She's a good waitress - instead of bringing Wyle a menu, she asks him if he wants his favourite (penne with asparagus, tomatoes and basil) and keeps his coffee cup full. 'He's great', Jodi says, unprompted, before heading towards the kitchen. If it were anyone else, one might assume that Wyle came here in the hope of getting this little endorsement. But then again, he seems too unassuming, too modest, too.. nice to do something like that. He's certainly not calling any attention to himself, sartorially speaking. The 27-year old actor is sporting a brown corduroy blazer, white T-shirt, jeans and a big incongruous brown beard. There's a story behind the facial hair. 'My girlfriend and I just went on a driving tour around the East Coast,' he explains. 'I grew this beard and put on a hat and sunglasses and thought maybe I can be anonymous this summer. Occasionally it works, but most of the time it doesn't. I go out with a make-up artist, so you'd think we could be a bit more creative than just a beard.' He's right. If he wants to hide, he should get more creative. For underneath the beard he's still Noah Wyle - all doleful brown eyes, impishly crooked teeth, boyish brown hair and good bed-side manner. No wonder mums write letters to him saying they want to fix him up with their daughters. It's no good. He's taken, but we'll get back to that. First let's get a little patient history. Noah Wyle grew up in Hollywood, the son of Marty and Stephen Wyle. After his parents divorced when he was seven, his mum, head orthopaedic nurse at a hospital in Los Angeles, married Jim Katz, a former vice-president of Universal who is now restoring film classics like My Fair Lady and Rear Window. In true TV sitcom style, Wyle grew up with a huge family: one sister, one brother, two step-sisters, one step-brother and one half-sister. Not only is his family big, it's also educated. His siblings run the career gamut from an equine veterinarian to a cultural engineering student. Wyle, however, took a different path. While attending Thatcher, a private boarding school in Ojai, California, he got his first taste of acting, playing a 65-year-old man in Joe Orton's Loot, 'with a British accent that sounded like a bad Peter O'Toole'. But that was enough for Wyle; he knew what he wanted to do with his life. His walls were covered with film posters and pictures of his favourite actors. 'Movies were Noah's obsession,' says JP Manoux, an actor/writer friend from Thatcher. After graduation, Wyle decided to skip college to pursue an acting career. But, not surprisingly, professional acting turned out to be professional table waiting. 'Fish fork, salad fork, salad knife, dessert spoon, polish this, polish that!" remembers Wyle, demonstrating how he set the table at The Wynfham Bel Age Hotel in West Hollywood. Then again, it wasn't all bad. 'The maître d' was wonderful at showing you the "nobility in humility" as he called it. To be a waiter you had to develop a way of thinking. "Sure, I'm pouring you coffee. But on the inside, I'm better than you."' 'Coffee?' Jodi is back with a refill. ' You don't even know how much coffee I've had,' says Wyle, accepting a third cup. Speaking of vices, he's trying to quit smoking. Again. 'I shouldn't even open my mouth about it,' he says. 'I once mentioned I was going to quit on The Tonight Show, which is the dumbest place in the world to announce anything. Every time I'm having a cigarette someone on the street goes, "Hey! I saw you the other night - you said you were going to quit. Doctor's shouldn't smoke!"' Ah, yes. Dr John Carter, the young intern that Wyle plays in ER. Three years after graduating from high school, he was still a waiter. He did get his SAG (Screen Actors Guild) card, however, with a TV movie called Blind Faith, and had small roles in Swing Kids and A Few Good Men. Finally, after a few 'innocuous' auditions for ER, he got the part and promptly signed a five-year contract. 'I figured it wouldn't go very far,' Wyle explains. 'Seven episodes and they'd cancel it.' But it went far. Really far. Insanely popular at home and abroad, ER has launched not only Wyle's career - he's been nominated for three Emmys and two Golden Globes - but it has George Clooney into a bat suit. His favourite thing about working on the show, he says, are the people he works with. It would be nice to hear about some on-set intrigue. But no, Anthony Edwards (Dr. Greene), Eriq LaSalle (Dr. Benton), Clooney (Dr. Ross) and Wyle are more like the Fab Four than feuding co-stars. In fact after shooting the pilot, LaSalle invited Wyle for a six-week trip to Spain. 'So I immediately called George and said, "What do I do?"', Wyle remembers. 'And he said, "Are you crazy? Don't do it! You'll go, you'll hate one another and then you'll come back and have to work together for five years." So I said, "You gonna come?" "Absolutely!" 'I think Noah and I have really benefited from being very close friends from the beginning.' Clooney recently told US magazine. 'I could keep him relaxed through the first-year run, not let it burn him. And then I could just watch the way he worked and steal things from him, because he's innately the smartest actor I know.' For the past four years, Wyle has been working 12 hours a day, five days a week, with three months off in the summer, and he just signed up to do two more seasons of ER. The only thing that has irked him about his day job, he says, was the idea of being type-cast as the 'funny, bumbling, neophyte doctor'. For a time this stereotype was so well entrenched that when his buddy Manoux accompanied Wyle on an ER publicity tour abroad, Wyle jumped into the Dead Sea in Israel - with his eyes open - and his blundering character on the show immediately sprung to mind. 'So he came up screaming with salt eating away his mucous membranes,' recalls Manoux, 'and we heard someone say, "Oh, there's Dr Carter from ER!"' However, Wyle is not as worried about being typecast as he used to be. 'Last year, there were really wonderful story-lines,' he says. 'There was that whole thing with my cousin's heroin addiction and I got to pull people away from a chemical explosion. Fun stuff.' Thus satisfied, Wyle is choosing his film roles so carefully that he's only made one movie since he started on ER. The Myth of Fingerprints was a 1997 drama about a family that reunites for a cathartic Thanksgiving weekend. 'I want to avoid taking the big pay cheque for a lousy script,' Wyle explains. So instead of saving the day in action films or being cure in romantic comedies, he's spending his summer working with the Blank Theatre Company, where he's producing a musical, Hello Again. He's also co-writing a screenplay based on a book about the early days of off-off-Broadway. Ironically, not working too much is part of Wyle's strategy. 'Nobody really saw The Myth of Fingerprints, but it was a beautiful script,' he says. 'My game plan is to have a nice body of work behind me, so when I finally take on a big part, if I bomb, I'll still have that nice body of work.' Actually, Fingerprints is how Wyle met his girlfriend and broke the hearts of mums everywhere, On his first day of shooting, he spied the make-up artist Tracy Warbin. 'I walked in, saw her, and asked who's that?' says Wyle. 'I don't know what it was. She looks like me in drag.' Narcissism or not, the two hit it off. Nowadays, Wyle and Warbin live in his home in the hills of Los Feliz - a hip LA neighbourhood - with four cats and three dogs. 'I'm sure this is just a testing ground for all the kids we'll have,' he says. 'I don't think kids could be any more work than the animals. The place is a poo factory with shredded upholstery.' So life is domestic and Wyle confirms that the countdown to the wedding proposal has already begun. Part of what makes his relationship with Warbin work, he says, is that he can rely on her to keep him in check. 'As an actor, you need someone who's grounded to say that the lows aren't exactly that low, and the highs aren't exactly that high,' he explains. 'I'm fairly oblivious to a lot of the attention I get. The general public always wants to see behind the curtain.' And what is behind the curtain? 'The great and powerful Oz!' Clearly, Wyle has a sense of humour when it comes to fame. Three years ago, he was in a restaurant in New York when he suddenly got the feeling that people were staring, so he started dramatically sipping his wine and tried to act grand. 'But about three-quarters of the way through dinner, I looked over my shoulder and Billy and Alec Baldwin were sitting behind me. So everyone was looking at them and I'm putting on a show like, "Yes, yes, thank you for watching ER!"' His is a refreshing attitude. Compare Wyle to his peers: Christian Slater is just out of jail, Johnny Depp is a known hotel trasher and Leonardo steals headlines for his relentless club/model hopping. Wyle, on the other hand, seems to lead a pretty sedate life. 'Do you agree?' he asks Jodi, who's brought the bill. 'Do I lead a sedate life?' He seems mildly miffed at the idea. 'I don't know,' she hedges. 'He's very professional, very good and very funny.' 'See?' he says, as if this proved something. 'That's not sedate at all!' Then again, isn't he thinking about grilling some tuna steaks for his girlfriend for dinner tonight? Didn't his friend Manoux say that he has a passion for ordering things like juicing machines off late-night TV infomercials? And hasn't he been spending his days overseeing some renovations on his house? 'I haven't hit a club in a long time,' he admits. 'yeah, I guess I just have quieter interests. In fact, I was watching Oprah the other day...' You were watching Oprah? He cringes. 'Well, yeah. Jim Carrey was on and saying he thinks his house should be big and beautiful because it is the only place he can be himself. And he's a much bigger star, but on a smaller scale it's true for me. Home is the one place I can go and have total control.' So what's he off to do now? Has he been cajoled into doing something non-sedate, perhaps? Wyle knows the question is a trap, but he's caught. And, happily, he's not afraid to admit it. 'I don't know,' he says with a smile. 'Gotta go tenderise the tuna steaks.'