Noah Wyle is Back in ER Scrubs on ‘The Pitt’

Are you doing anything different to stay healthy as you hit your 50s?

This show has been a real endurance run for me. I preemptively, in the last 18 months, started working out a couple times a week, doing things that I could do even during a production schedule in my dressing room. It's a lot of stretching. There's these TRX [resistance] bands that you can hang, and you can do a whole multitude of exercises on them. … [I’m] trying to watch what I eat, really trying to play the moderation [game] when it comes to sugar and alcohol and all the things that I like to numb and soothe myself with. Trying to get a lot of sleep, which is increasingly difficult as we get deeper into production, as my waking day and my sleeping night become very synonymous with each other.

What's the best part about getting older?

The recognition that I have just aggregately acquired some experience, and a little bit of insight into who I am and what makes me tick and how the world works. Whether I can affect any real change in it, I don't know. But I've really come to appreciate that professionally, I feel quite capable in what I do. That I've managed to wrestle my imposter syndrome to the ground pretty well and embrace that. I get a lot of joy and a lot of orientation from what I do.

Sounds like your 50s come with some peace?

I have a gratitude practice [where] I write down the things that I'm most grateful for, and so I'm always conscious of them throughout my day. The fact that I have great relationships with my children [daughter Frances Harper, 9, with wife Sara Wells, and daughter Auden, 19, and son Owen, 22, with ex-wife Tracy Warbin], my wife and my parents are my biggest blessings.

Are any of your kids following in your acting footsteps?

My daughter Auden got her SAG [Screen Actors Guild] card playing my daughter on an episode of Leverage: Redemption a couple years ago, and then came back and reprised her role last year, and is in two episodes in the upcoming third season of that show. And she just booked her first movie, actually. She has all the talents.

What advice do you give her about it?

Same I give my young costars on this show: You have to make sure you're getting your validation from within before you look for it to come from without. If you base your self-esteem or your sense of self-worth on the opinion of others, you'll be chasing their approval and their love unsuccessfully right down the drain. And you have to find something outside of this that makes you happy. You have to have connections and relationships that are really grounding, that feel real and keep your perspective in check. And it's really good to have a hobby, another passion that you can pour yourself into.

Your ranch in Santa Ynez is an outside passion — how’s the animal situation there these days?

We've got a steer named Calvin that is a rescue from a rodeo up in Salinas that my sister, [who] was the vet attendant for, gave me. I've got one pig left. We've lost a few animals over the years and we're thinking about restocking soon, but we want to be there with some consistency to enjoy that. So we've got space and we're looking, [but] don't send me your animals [he said with a laugh].

In our very first meeting back in 1996, you shared that you collected Noah’s Arks. How many do you have now?

Oh goodness, probably hundreds. I am a hoarder. I am a collector. I'm a pack rat. I'm a junker. I'm a picker. I have a large enough house that you can't really tell how bad the problem is, but it's bad enough that I have to define what a collection is in realistic terms and know when it's complete. How many walking canes is enough walking canes? You name it, I collect it. Mostly, we have an expression in our family that the line of demarcation between collecting and hoarding is taste, and we fall just on the respectable side. I collect a lot of books.

What's the most valuable book — personally, not monetarily?

I have a really lovely edition of Cannery Row. John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday are kind of touchstone books for my wife and me. We read them during our courtship. Monterey, California [the books’ setting], has a really kind of special resonance for us. So sentimentally, those are two I'd grab in a fire.  

What would you tell your 21-year-old self?

I still want to tell myself not to worry as much as I do. I sometimes think that everything works out the way it does because of how much I worry or the mental gymnastics I put into it. And the truth is, none of that's true. And it's all wasted effort and energy. And I wish I could go back and relieve myself of some of that tsuris [a Yiddish word meaning trouble or distress], some of that anxiety and say: There are hardships, but they all trend toward the right lesson. It ends up OK.

Do you have any plans to retire?

No. Never. I was joking with some actor friends that we all pity the PA [production assistant] that has to find us on the floor of our trailer. Everybody is envious of my memory, my ability to learn dialogue. If you’re really asking. … There are days when that is not as easy as it used to be. And those of us that tend toward perfectionism, it's a more daunting thought. I like to believe that I’ll have the ability and the means to gracefully step back and enjoy other aspects of life and see it as a liberation from the rigors of production. I'm up at 4:30 or 5 every day to get to the studio at 6, and we put in our full 10 or 11 hours. There's not a lot of sitting on this show. It's a lot of moving and lifting and a very physical job, and then I come home and I've got to learn all the lines for the next day and get a decent night’s rest. That, on the other side of 60, doesn't sound great to me.