Now he is 34. And now he is Barney, Barney Stinson - the well-suited, well-versed Lothario; the good-time-guy best bud to that romantic slacker Ted on the CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother. Harris is in the midst of his third season with the show. Year two brought him an Emmy nomination for best supporting actor in a comedy series. So popular is Barney that the name Doogie rarely surfaces these days. Now airport shout-outs are requests to "suit up," a popular Barney-ism that fits nicely with Barney's Fortress of Barnitude bachelor pad and his king-size bed, which has just one solitary pillow (hint).

"There's nothing like people coming up to talk about Barney," Harris says. "I've lived with other names for far longer than that."

Plucked from a place that Hollywood sees as merely flyover country, Harris is one of the few former child stars who have steady work instead of a steady stream of scandals, a feat that seems to be increasingly unusual. He attributes his stability - professional and otherwise - to having parents who never saw a moment that wasn't teachable and to his hometown of Albuquerque.

Harris's parents grew up in New Mexico, raised him there, and still reside there, as do his grandma, his cousins, and the elder brother he followed to an audition in the fourth grade (at which he nabbed the plum role of, well, Toto in a production of The Wizard of Oz). When Harris jets home for the holidays, it's for a family-heavy shindig.

But the day we meet, Harris is on Stage 22 of the Fox Studios Lot in Los Angeles, the set of How I Met Your Mother. He's taking a break during an episode in which Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) have had a fight and Ted (Josh Radnor), Robin (Cobie Smulders), and Barney are trying to, CSI-like, find out exactly how it unfolded and why. There are flashbacks, fast-forwards, real-time interactions, and the usual array of zingers.

Since they're paying homage to CSI, the CBS hit that's set in the arid Southwest, it seems only appropriate that Harris and I chat about his love of hot, spicy green chiles and about what makes another Southwestern city - his beloved Albuquerque - so beloved.