How I Met Your Mother cast now – co-star romances, cancer battle and music career

When How I Met Your Mother first aired on CBS back in 2005, it would go on to enjoy an era of almost a decade.

Based on by the real-life friendship of show creators Craig Thomas and Carter Bays, the sitcom focused on Ted Mosby’s (Josh Radnor) quest for love alongside his friends in Manhattan, New York City.

The show was told from the perspective of future Ted, who recalls the action-packed story of how he met their mother to his children.

The beloved American sitcom ran for nine seasons between 2005 and 2014 with a whopping 208 episodes under its belt, but it also won plenty of awards during its time on the small screen.

The quirky comedy series was nominated for 30 Emmy Awards and won ten of them.

The show even managed to nab the People’s Choice Award for Favourite Network TV Comedy – seven years after the show premiered.

To mark 16 years since the show first graced our screens on 19 September 2005, the Star have caught up with the lives of the cast since the iconic show ended.

Josh Radnor – Ted Mosby

Hopeless romantic Ted was the show’s leading man, who strives to find his dream lady who eventually becomes the mother of his children.

After he left the set of How I Met Your Mother, Ted actor Josh Radnor went on to star in a string of films and TV shows, but he also decided to turn his talents to writing and directing.

In 2016, he starred in the Civil War period drama Mercy Street, and followed that up with main roles in Rise (2018) and Hunters, which only premiered last year.

However, he starred alongside fashion icon Elisabeth Olson n the 2012 university-set romance film Liberal Arts – a film which he also directed and wrote.

Josh is a musical maestro too, and in 2016 he announced he was in a band called Radnor and Lee with an Australian musician called Ben Lee.

It turns out the pair met on the set of HIMYM and ended up writing songs together, and their 2017 debut album was praised by Rolling Stone magazine.

Josh also revealed that he’s a fan of meditation, and that it helped him get over a break up after fell into depression.

He said in an interview: “When actors ask me for my one piece of advice, I always tell them to meditate. The thing that will take you down, personally and professionally, is your mind.”

“If you grieve, you grieve hard, and it moves through you. There’s a fluidity to feelings and thoughts and you don’t get hooked.”

Jason Segel – Marshall Eriksen

Jason played Ted’s loyal friend Marshall, who gets married to Lily (Alyson Hannigan).

Jason may be best known for playing Marshall, but his first big break was Judd Apatow’s one season sitcom Freaks and Geeks, where he starred alongside James Franco and Seth Rogan.

When HIMYM wrapped, he went on to star, write and produce in a string of comedy films including Sex Tape (2014), where he worked with Hollywood babe Cameron Diaz.

Last year, he created the drama series, Dispatches from Elsewhere – working as a writer, director and executive producer on the project.

Interestingly, Segel is an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church, and he even performed a live wedding ceremony on The Tonight Show in July 2010.

The couple in question were had won his attention by placing photos of Jason around his home town and the bar that he visited regularly.

Jason dated Brokeback Mountain actress Michelle Williams for a year between 2012 to 2013

Cobie Smulders – Robin Scherbatsky

Cobie played reporter Robin Scherbatsky, Ted’s love interest and close pal.

After finishing up with Robin on HIMYM, Cobie has gone on to enjoy huge success in the world-famous Marvel Cinematic Universe.

She’s played Agent Maria Hill in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019).

That means she’s starred alongside the likes of A-listers including Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth and Tom Holland.

She also worked alongside Mission Impossible legend Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016).

Tragically, Smulders revealed that she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2007 – which meant she was still shooting season 3 of HIMYM at the age of 25.

She had to undergo surgery to remove tumours from her ovaries, but unfortunately the cancer spread to her lymph nodes which led to Cobie needing a number of operations.

However, in 2019, Smulders announced that she was in remission.

She married US comedian Taran Killam at a California ceremony in 2012 after the pair got engaged in January 2009.

Killam starred in some episodes of HIMYM, meaning the pair got to work with each-other on set despite not being on-screen lovers.

The couple share two daughters, born in 2009 and 2015.

Neil Patrick Harris – Barney Stinson

Neil was nominated for four Emmy Awards for his role as the womanising Barney Stinson in HIMYM.

However, he’s also achieved great success on the stage and screen, and was invited to host the 87th Oscars in 2015 – becoming the first openly gay man to host the Academy Awards.

He’s also hosted the Tony Awards four times between 2009 and 2013 along with the Emmys in 2009 and 2013.

His film hits include murder thriller Gone Girl (2014) and Seth Macfarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014).

Neil came out as gay in public in November 2006, saying: “I am happy to dispel any rumors or misconceptions and am quite proud to say that I am a very content gay man living my life to the fullest and feel most fortunate to be working with wonderful people in the business I love.”

He is married to actor David Burka, who starred with Neil in HIMYM – another co-star romance story for the sitcom’s history books.

In fact, Pamela Fryman, the director of HIMYM, officiated the wedding whilst Elton John performed at the reception.

They now share their twins Gildeon and Harper, after using a surrogate mother to become parents.

Alyson Hannigan – Lily Aldrin

Buffy the Vampire star Alyson was already famous before playing Marshall’s wife, Lily Aldrin on the sitcom.

She is also famed for playing Michelle Flaherty in the American Pie film series, but success clearly continued for her with HIMYM as she won a People’s Choice Award in 2009 for her Lily role.

Since 2016, she has been hosting the magic competition show, Penn & Teller: Fool Us, and providing her vocal talents for the voice of Claire Clancy in the Disney Junior animated series, Fancy Nancy.

Alyson tied the knot with her Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel co-star Alexis Denisof in California on 11 October, 2003.

The celebrity pair held their wedding at the lush Two Bunch Palms Resort in Desert Hot Springs, California.

They now live in Los Angeles with their two daughters, Satyana and Keeva.

Cristin Milioti – Tracy McConnell

Although Cristin only starred in the last season of How I Met Your Mother from 2013 to 2014, she had the titular role as Ted’s wife Tracy, ‘the mother’.

The same year that she starred in the sitcom, she played Teresa Petrillo Belfort in the 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street alongside the one-and-only Leonardo DiCaprio.

However, she’s had plenty of success since HIMYM, appearing in black comedy show Fargo (2015) and Palm Springs in 2020, where she worked with Brooklyn 99 star, Andy Samberg.

For more of the latest showbiz news from the Daily Star, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters here.

Black Mirror fans might also recognise her from the fourth season of the Netflix sci-fi show, when she starred in the episode, USS Callister.

She played a newly-employed game developer who gets trapped in a virtual world developed by an evil creator – an employee at her company.

This year, she took on the role of Hazel in the HBO Max comedy series, Made for Love (2021).

Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk