Noah Wyle, ER season finale

By MICHELE MANELIS

It was nine years ago when Noah Wyle first hooked a stethoscope around his neck and became Dr John Carter.

Sitting at his desk, surrounded by x-ray machines and medical paraphernalia, Wyle looks at home. The set of ER is a hive of activity and actors dressed in physicians' regalia are buzzing around the makeshift hospital on the lot of Warner Bros.

"It's great that over the years I've slowly climbed up the call sheet and I am now number one on the list," he says.

"It's extremely rewarding to come full circle. I began as a third-level medical student and I'm now chief resident and administrator of the hospital. For an actor, there are few challenges as dramatic as playing the same character for nine years while keeping him realistic and plausible. But I'm as excited about ER as I have always been."

When Wyle became the central character replacing Anthony Edwards, who took over the reins from George Clooney, he was ready to accept the challenge of playing the lead.

"It was scary at first, but I've settled in. I think with the addition of Sharif Atkins [Michael Gallant] and Mekhi Phifer [Gregory Pratt] and with the exits of Eric [La Salle - Peter Benton] and Tony [Edwards - Mark Greene], it was a nice changing of the guard where characters who had been here for a long time moved on.

"It's great to have some younger, hungrier people. It's brought a new energy and brought it back to where it was in the first couple of seasons. And for me, to have my character mature personally and professionally has been rewarding."

During ER's hiatus, Wyle has dabbled in darker roles on the big screen. "There was a novelty factor in casting me in bad guy/morally ambiguous roles, such as in Enough or White Oleander.

"There is something really liberating about playing a heavy guy, especially when I play such a well-intentioned person all the time on the TV show." He pauses. "So, you were one of the 10 people who saw Enough?" he jokes. "It must have been the only J-Lo movie which didn't make $100 million."

Wyle is sifting through scripts but has not decided what he will do during the hiatus this year. But now with his wife, Tracy, a former makeup artist, and baby son, Owen Strausser, born in November, his priorities have changed and he is less keen to rush out to another movie set.

nte Not surprisingly, Wyle was present for his son's birth. "It was sobering to know that I understood everything the doctor was talking about during my wife's labour.

"I definitely understand now how ignorance can be bliss in certain situations. Having been a doctor on a TV show all this time, I know how everything works - in theory.

"I know how to put in a tube, but to actually do it would terrify me. So, it's weird to have this kind of background knowledge of all the things that could potentially go wrong.

"I was watching the baby monitor with an educated eye, maybe a too educated eye just because I've done a hundred episodes where the baby was experiencing foetal distress.

"But the nice thing about being on a medical show is you get really good health care if you have to go into hospital. You just bring a stack of photographs and sign away and you'll get taken care of."

Wyle says ER is occupying a "rarefied space" after celebrating its 200th episode.

"Only five or six other television shows have reached that milestone. And if ratings stay consistent, the show may run for 12, if not 14 seasons," he says.

"In a lot of ways when Tony left, it was the perfect time to leave. There will come a point when my character should leave. When the storyline is not fresh any more, hopefully I'll be the first to notice it, and will bow out gracefully. I think I'll know when it'll be time to pass the torch, or the stethoscope."

* TV2 8.30 tonight