Noah Wyle was born Noah Strausser Speer Wyle on June 4, 1971, in Hollywood, California. He was the middle child of three raised by parents Stephen Wyle, an electrical engineer, and Marjorie Speer, an orthopedic nurse. His parents divorced when Wyle was six. His mother, with whom the children lived, later married James C. Katz, a film restorer who had three children of his own from a previous marriage. For his high school education, Wyle attended Thacher, a unique boarding school in the Ojai Valley of California.