John Krasinski

John Burke Krasinski was born on October 20, 1979, in the Boston suburb of Newton, Massachusetts, the youngest of three boys of nurse Mary Clare (née Doyle) and internist Ronald Krasinski. His mother is of Irish ancestry, and his father of Polish. He was raised Catholic. Krasinski made his stage debut as Daddy Warbucks in a sixth-grade school production of the musical Annie. He co-starred in a satirical play written and cast by his future The Office co-star B. J. Novak when they were high school seniors. Krasinski and Novak graduated from Newton South High School in 1997. Before entering college, Krasinski taught English as a foreign language in Costa Rica for six months. While there, he saved a woman from drowning when she was caught in a rip tide at a beach in Manuel Antonio National Park. Krasinski said that learning from his mother, who was a lifeguard, helped him save the woman. Krasinski attended Brown University, where he studied English and playwriting, and wrote an honors thesis, "Contents Under Pressure." He graduated from Brown in 2001. At Brown, he was a member of the sketch comedy group Out of Bounds and helped coach youth basketball at the Gordon School in East Providence, Rhode Island. He then attended the National Theater Institute in Waterford, Connecticut.