Noah Wyle Is Owning 2025 With ‘The Pitt’ -But His Strangest Role Was In A 2001 Cult Classic You’ve Definitely Seen (And Probably Missed Him In)

Noah Wyle is having a moment again. After winning an Emmy for The Pitt and reminding everyone he’s still one of TV’s most reliable stars, it’s easy to think of him as the guy who never left primetime. Already years into his 254-episode stretch as Dr. John Carter in ER, he was a household name and one of the most popular figures on television. The primetime routine was relentless, but somehow, in the middle of all that, he managed to carve out time to film a small role in a weird little indie about sleepwalking, time travel, and a terrifying man in a rabbit suit.

That movie went on to become a cult phenomenon, and Wyle’s cameo has since become one of its most underrated deep cuts. That movie is none other than Donnie Darko. We will admit that Donnie Darko was a F L O P when it first came out. It was released in limited release, opening on just 58 screens. Critics were underwhelmed and puzzled, and audiences ALSO had no idea what was going on. Like any good slow burn, then came the DVD and the midnight showings, and suddenly, there was no escaping the film’s manic mystery, and an almost nonexistent opening box office became one of the most widely discussed and rewatched films of the early 2000s.

Buried in the heart of the film? Noah Wyle, in the role of Dr. Kenneth Monnitoff, Donnie’s science teacher. He’s in no way in any of the movie’s big, flashy, easy-to-recall moments. He’s not in the scene in the movie theater or the Halloween party or in the finale at the end of the world. He’s in the classroom, when Donnie is doing his best to talk his way through the strange world of time travel. Monnitoff doesn’t brush him off or laugh him out of the room. He listens. He walks him through wormholes and Einstein-Rosen bridges, making the film’s trippy murder mystery play by real-enough-to-believe science. At one point, Donnie tries to push the conversation into God and predestination and Monnitoff stops him cold, saying flatly: “I could lose my job.”

Wyle got to work with some of the most delightfully offbeat early 2000s Hollywood had to offer. The film’s cast is a near-perfect time capsule of the era’s best and weirdest, Drew Barrymore as an English teacher, Patrick Swayze as a motivational speaker with a horrifying secret, Katharine Ross as Donnie’s psychiatrist, Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal as siblings, Jena Malone as Donnie’s girlfriend Gretchen, and even a very young Seth Rogen in the first credited role of his career. Wyle, still working a heavy slate at County General between ER seasons, slid right into this merry band of oddballs.

Fans are still arguing over all the ins and outs of Donnie Darko two decades later. Timelines, the jet engine, Frank the rabbit. Monnitoff’s quiet, brief appearances still ring the clearest in a lot of memories because he’s there to give Donnie some answers, but not all the answers. He’s there to ground the film’s reality a little bit without unraveling the mystery, to make the movie’s more out-there moments play by rules that the audience can at least pretend to understand.

Noah Wyle may be getting his just desserts now thanks to The Pitt and his Emmy nod, but fans may remember – at the absolute height of his ER fame, Wyle also found the time to slip into the strangest, most beloved cult film of all time.