2015 Oscar host is Neil Patrick Harris

LOS ANGELES — Actor Neil Patrick Harris will host next year’s Academy Awards ceremony, the organizers of Hollywood’s biggest night said on Wednesday.

Harris, 41, best known as Barney Stinson on the CBS sitcom “How I Met Your Mother,” has hosted TV’s Emmy Awards. He also won three Emmy awards for hosting the television presentation of theater’s Tony Awards.

The 87th Oscars, handed out by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, will be presented in a televised ceremony from Los Angeles on Feb. 22 on the ABC television network, owned by Walt Disney Co.

Talk show host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres hosted the Oscars ceremony this year, and drew the highest Oscars telecast audience in 14 years with 43.7 million tuning in live.

DeGeneres, who is openly gay like Harris, poked fun at the powerful people in the room, handed out pizza and took a star-studded selfie that set Twitter’s record for most retweets.

Harris most recently co-starred in dark thriller and early Oscar contender “Gone Girl.”