LOS ANGELES: Award-winning US stage and screen actor Neil Patrick Harris will host the next Oscars show, organizers announced.
The star, who has hosted both Broadway's Tony and TV's Emmy awards
shows in the past, will front the 87th Academy Awards on February 22,
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Wednesday.
The high-profile hosting job is a prime gig in Hollywood, at the climax
of its annual awards season. Harris will follow Ellen DeGeneres last
year and a who's who of showbiz over the decades.
"It is truly
an honor and a thrill to be asked to host this year's Academy Awards,"
said the star of 2005's "How I Met Your Mother," in an Academy
statement.
"I grew up watching the Oscars and was always in
such awe of some of the greats who hosted the show," added Harris, whose
latest film "Gone Girl" came out this month in the United States.
He added: "To be asked to follow in the footsteps of Johnny Carson,
Billy Crystal, Ellen DeGeneres and everyone else who had the great
fortune of hosting is a bucket list dream come true."
Producers
Craig Zadan and Neil Meron said: "We are thrilled to have Neil host the
Oscars. We have known him his entire adult life, and we have watched
him explode as a great performer in feature films, television and stage.
"To work with him on the Oscars is the perfect storm, all of
his resources and talent coming together on a global stage," added the
pair, returning for their third Oscars show in a row.
Industry
journal Variety noted that, with the Oscars job Harris will have done
three of the four so-called EGOT full house of hosting duties -- the
Emmys, Oscars and Tonys, with only the Grammys to go.
Harris,
who hosted the Tony awards and the Emmys in 2009 and 2013, has been
nominated for four Golden Globes and won five Emmys, including four for
hosting the Tonys.
The Academy Awards are televised live in
more than 225 countries around the globe. Organizers will announce
nominations for the Oscars on January 15.
Hosting awards shows is more difficult and prone to pitfalls than many imagine.
Recent questionable Oscars hosts have included James Franco and Anne
Hathaway who were widely panned in 2011, and Seth McFarlane whose "We
saw your boobs' song raised eyebrows, not in a good way.
