By Steven Goldman

Noah Wyle stepped out of the ER for a summer, made a low-budget indie, fell for his makeup artist, and discovered that he still isn't quite ready to leave the nest

Opening Incision: Victor's Deli, L.A.; Wednesday, 10:30 a.m.

" 'Diagnosis: severe peripheral vascular disease, manifested by clot occlusion of the left calf. . . .' ''

Noah Wyle is doing his medical-dictionary recital, punctuated by a wry smile and furtive stabs at a cold English muffin. He is at peace with the doctor thing. He knows what it's for, knows its limitations -- neither something to run from nor cling to. He twirls a silver ring on his right forefinger (a gift from girlfriend Tracy Warbin) and doesn't care much about the small hole in his T-shirt (a love scratch from J.J., his dog). In all, he's proud of his work and would like to continue even after the doors of ER inevitably close. The rest, however, remains a question mark.

Vital Signs

"I got mono, so I did the whole thing sick. I closed the TV show on a Friday and started shooting the movie that following Monday.''

This month, Wyle leaps off the small screen with The Myth of Fingerprints. Though he's made movies before -- well before ever taking his first needle in the butt on ER -- he considers this his big-screen coming-out party. As the bleeding-heart black sheep of an emotionally constipated family in Myth, Wyle is cast, once again, as the outsider looking in. The title (from a Paul Simon song) hints at the mutability of identity, how it changes with the passage of time -- an idea that has featured prominently on Wyle's mental playlist lately. "I don't think if I auditioned for ER today I would get it," he says. "I wouldn't have the same naivete about me, or the same innocence." Indeed, Wyle's clearly aware of the precarious nature of what he calls his "celebriticism" and expresses a genuine fear of falling prey to the Friends curse. "I was really nervous about the first project I did coming off ER," he says. "I knew that whatever it was, it would be more closely scrutinized than anything I'd done before. The best I could hope for was to not set myself up for a fall."

Two CC's of a Hollywood Youth

"I used to sneak through the park, sit on the ledge, and watch them film all sorts of skin flicks.''

The third of seven children from a blended family, Wyle had an upbringing that reads like something out of Roddy Doyle crossed with F. Scott Fitzgerald. The 26-year-old actor describes it as "from outhouse to penthouse and back,'' owing to the sporadic nature of stepfather James Katz's work as a film restorer. Ironically enough, Wyle's real father, Steven Wyle, didn't even own a TV for much of the actor's childhood.

Still, though Wyle spins tales of sneaking into Hollywood movie palaces and selling his sister's jewelry to "the Hungarians behind the 7-Eleven," the story on the whole smacks more of East Egg than of Barrytown.

Wyle was educated at a Southern California boarding school and skipped college to hit the audition trail at seventeen. Though he quickly found work, his first few films -- Blind Faith, Crooked Hearts, There Goes My Baby, Swing Kids -- proved forgettable. "I was the Michael Cooper of acting -- when the starting five didn't work, they'd call me." He lost out on the Henry Thomas role in Legends of the Fall and went on to bit parts in A Few Good Men and the feminist Guinevere, which was shot in Lithuania. "When I came back I was just miserable enough to start taking TV scripts," he says. "That's when I got ER. . . . Funny how the thing I put up so much resistance to has been my bread, butter, cake, and icing."

Monitor Heartbeat

"I met her the first day of shooting. She just took my heart."

Wyle steps outside for a nicotine fix. He hopes the cigarette doesn't make it into the story ("It gets blown out of proportion in print"). But there's no use promoting his wholesome image -- it's a thing of the past. Through the cloud of smoke you can see the guy's in love (a contagion on the Myth set, what with first-time director Bart Freundlich hooking up with Wyle's costar Julianne Moore). "She was the makeup artist . . . radiant, you know, a beautiful person,'' he enthuses, with all the romanticism one usually reserves for lost loves. He and Warbin spent the early summer together, away from the hype, vacationing in Bora-Bora. Sounds better than Wyle's watching ER reruns with his mother, which is how he'd have you believe he spends his time: "Isn't that what interviewers want to hear?" In truth, Noah Wyle is just a guy who hopes his heart doesn't lead him astray. "Everybody was expecting him to do this huge breakout film, like George Clooney," says Freundlich. "My script dealt with things he had been dealing with in his own family, and that was important to him. He doesn't really see the risk he took in doing it."

Prognosis

"If all else fails, I can always jet on over to Lithuania, where they love me. Did I tell you I'm a household name in the Baltics?"