Chris Noth

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Chris Noth
Noth as Det. Mike Logan on Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Birth name	Christopher David Noth
Born	November 13, 1954 Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Notable roles	Det. Mike Logan, Law & Order & Law & Order: Criminal Intent Mr. Big, Sex and the City

Christopher Noth (born November 13, 1954 in Madison, Wisconsin) is an actor in American film, stage and television. He is best known for two long-running television roles: as Det. Mike Logan on Law & Order, and as "Mr. Big" on Sex and the City.

Noth (pronounced to rhyme with "both"), is a name which has its origins in the European area of Alsace-Lorraine (on the border of France and Germany), where it is pronounced as "note." The youngest of three sons whose father, Charles, died when he was eight, Noth traveled throughout the United Kingdom, Serbia, and Spain with his mother, CBS News reporter Jeanne Parr, who is of Irish descent. [1]

Noth's undergraduate (poetry-writing) years were spent at Marlboro College in Vermont, where he built himself a log cabin. He earned an MFA from Yale School of Drama (where he acted in some twenty-five plays) and was a pupil of acting coach Sanford Meisner before making his film debut in 1988 in the low-budget Jakarta 1988 (Noth lived in Indonesia for a year-and-half and has called it his "spiritual home".) He also had small parts in films such as Smithereens 1982 and Baby Boom (1987), and on TV series such as Hill Street Blues and Another World.

In 1988, he filmed a pilot for the legal/police drama series Law & Order. In 1990, NBC began airing the show, which slowly gained recognition from critics and fans. The darkly handsome Noth's intense portrayal of the cocky, troubled Det. Mike Logan made him the most popular actor on the show, so viewers were stunned when producers fired him in 1995. Frequent personality clashes between Noth and the writers were cited; both sides remained cool toward each other but warmed up long enough to film a Logan-dominated TV movie, Exiled: A Law & Order Movie 1998.

Noth scored a strong comeback in 1998 when he began the role of Carrie Bradshaw's enigmatic on-again/off-again boyfriend "Mr. Big" on HBO's Sex and the City. Noth played the role for six years, during which he also appeared in a small role as Helen Hunt's husband in the hit film Cast Away 2000 and starred in a Broadway revival of The Best Man.

Noth co-owns a New York City nightclub called The Cutting Room, and can be found on the NYC party scene, or in the local gossip rags. Former girlfriends include actress Winona Ryder and supermodel Beverly Johnson, with whom he had an extremely volatile relationship that ended in litigation. He is currently living with actress Tara Wilson.

In 2005, Noth returned to playing Mike Logan. Starting with the 2005-2006 season of Law & Order spinoff Criminal Intent, he has played one half of a detective team (the other half being Det. Carolyn Barek played by Annabella Sciorra in 2005-2006 and currently in 2006-2007 Det. Megan Wheeler played by Julianne Nicholson) which alternates episode-appearances with the original detective team Det. Robert Goren & Det. Alexandra Eames (played by Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe). In the two-part episode, "In the Wee Small Hours" 2005 both teams appeared together.