John Krasinski

John Burke Krasinski ( born October 20, 1979) is an American actor and filmmaker.

John Burke Krasinski was born on October 20, 1979 at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston, the youngest of three boys of nurse Mary Clare (née Doyle; born 1949) and internist Ronald Krasinski (born 1946).

His mother is of Irish ancestry, and his father of Polish.

He was raised Catholic in the Boston suburb of Newton, Massachusetts.

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 riptide at a beach in Manuel Antonio National Park.

Krasinski attended Brown University, where he studied English and playwriting, and wrote an honors thesis, "Contents Under Pressure".

In 2000, Krasinski interned as a scriptwriter on the show Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

After graduating from Brown University, he moved to New York to pursue acting.

He appeared in commercials, guest-starred on television shows, and did readings of off-Broadway plays while working as a waiter.

He starred in the play What the Eunuch Saw, written and directed by his former college classmates Emily O'Dell and Isaac Robert Hurwitz.

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 and studied at the Actors Center in New York.

Krasinski's breakthrough came in 2004 when he was cast in the NBC sitcom The Office, a remake of the successful British TV series.

In the series, a mockumentary about life at a mid-sized paper supply company, he played Jim Halpert, an intelligent and mild-mannered sales representative and, in later seasons, co-manager of the paper distribution company Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Krasinski and Jenna Fischer's characters were also the series' love interests.

To prepare for the role, Krasinski visited Scranton and interviewed employees at actual paper companies.

He also shot the footage of Scranton used in the opening credits.

He appeared in every episode of the series and also directed several, including "Sabre".

He is known for his role as Jim Halpert on the NBC sitcom The Office (2005–2013), where he was also a producer and occasional director.

For his work in the series (2005–2013), he earned approximately US$100,000 per episode of the third season of The Office, four times his salary for the previous two seasons.

In 2006, Krasinski co-starred in Jason Carvey's independently produced, direct-to-DVD heist comedy A New Wave with Andrew Keegan and Lacey Chabert.

Educated in theatre arts at Brown University, Krasinski's film credits include License to Wed (2007), Leatherheads (2008), Away We Go (2009), It's Complicated (2009), Something Borrowed (2011), Promised Land (2012), Aloha (2015), and 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016).

In 2007, he co-starred with Anna Faris and Danny Masterson as Brevin in Gregg Araki's independent stoner comedy Smiley Face (2007).

Reviews were largely positive for the film.

Later that year, he starred in the romantic comedy License to Wed (2007) with Mandy Moore and Robin Williams.

Despite negative critical reception of the film, it emerged as a commercial success.

Krasinski guest-starred in a number of television series including Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Without a Trace, Ed, American Dad! and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

He directed and starred in the comedy-drama films Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009) and The Hollars (2016).

Krasinski has also performed voice-over work in animated and documentary films, including in Monsters University (2013).

He established a production company, Sunday Night Productions, in 2013.

For co-creating the reality show Lip Sync Battle (2015–2019), he received three nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Structured Reality Program.

He is married to English actress Emily Blunt, with whom he has two daughters.

He directed, co-wrote and co-starred in the 2018 horror film A Quiet Place, for which Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

From 2018 to 2023, he played the title character in the Amazon Prime Video thriller series Jack Ryan, where he was also an executive producer.

He has since written and directed the sequel A Quiet Place Part II (2020).