Famous Half-Jews: Noah Wyle

[Gary Freedman]

Noah Strausser Speer Wyle (born June 4, 1971) is an American film, television and theater actor. He is best known for his role as Dr. John Carter on the TV drama ER. He has also played Steve Jobs in the 1999 docudrama Pirates of Silicon Valley and Flynn Carsen in The Librarian franchise. Wyle was named one of the 50 Most Beautiful People by People magazine in 2001.

Wyle, the middle one of three children, was born in Hollywood, California, the son of Marjorie (née Speer), a registered orthopedic head nurse, and Stephen Wyle, an electrical engineer. Noah's parents eventually split in the late seventies and his mother later remarried to James C. Katz, a film restorationist with three children of his own from a previous marriage. Wyle's paternal grandparents, Edith and Frank Wyle, founded the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum. Edith Wyle was an expressionist painter who also created The Egg and The Eye, an innovative café and shop on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile district of Los Angeles, which soon became the preferred hangout for artists, travelers and dreamers. Wyle was raised in a Reform Jewish home. He was educated at The Thacher School in Ojai, California, and graduated with the class of 1989. Wyle participated in a theater arts program at Northwestern University after his junior year of high school and appeared in high school plays even winning an award for a play he wrote. After graduation he studied with acting teacher Larry Moss while living in a small apartment on Hollywood Boulevard.

I miss ER. Great show!