Neil Patrick Harris bares all for his front cover feature on the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

The 40 year-old sports nothing more than a bow tie and a black top hat to hide his modesty, in the revealing shoot of the magazine.

One striking aspect of the photo-spread is Harris's considerable weight loss, which is for his role as a transsexual German glam rocker in Broadway's 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch.'

"I need to eat more," he told the mag in the accompanying article. "That's becoming apparent. I'm so intent on looking feminine, on changing my silhouette. But I'm running out of energy, and it's affecting my mood."

Ironically, femininity is something the openly gay actor has attempted to keep away from.

"I have always been highly aware of how I was presenting myself," he confessed to Rolling Stone, recalling his previous "desire to not seem overly effeminate" is just a "stupid concern" as he is now "playing overtly feminine and loving it."

The 'How I Met Your Mother' alum came out in 2006, and he now shares two children with his longtime partner David Burtka, but coming to terms with his sexuality was a long process.

Harris always knew he had ""crushes on boys" at a young age but didn't know "how that would be manifested" as he matured. "I think it would be easier to make that leap at that age now, because there are so many examples," he said. "But not back then, in a tiny town in the middle of the mountains of New Mexico."

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However, "I wasn't troubled by it," he reiterated. "Playing footsie with a friend under the table at school was very charged, to me, but I didn't know then what to do about it."

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The Broadway star concluded with the tricky situations having sex can lead to: "No one likes an awkward lay. You want to lay someone who wants to lay you; you want to say who you like and get to lay that person. That's good sex. You don't want to lay some girl that you're supposed to lay, who you don't like, but you don't want anyone to know that. Like, neither person is having good sex. You might as well beat off."

Neil Patrick Harris
Harris and his longtime partner David Burkta