John Krasinski

• 1. Introduction

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  John Krasinski hosted a livestreamed prom on the 17th of April 2020. It was meant for high schoolers whose real proms had been cancelled, and 210,000 viewers tuned in. Live performances came from Billie Eilish, Finneas, the Jonas Brothers and DJ D-Nice. Krasinski is an American actor and filmmaker, and for years most audiences knew him as a familiar face on television. How did a young man from a Boston suburb come to command that kind of crowd? And why did so many famous people agree to show up when he asked?

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• 2. Newton To Costa Rica

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  John Burke Krasinski was born on the 20th of October 1979 in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. His mother, Mary Clare, is a nurse, and his father, Ronald Krasinski, is an internist. He is the youngest of their three sons. His mother is of Irish ancestry, his father is of Polish descent, and he is Catholic.

  Krasinski made his stage debut as Daddy Warbucks in a sixth-grade school production of the musical Annie. In high school he co-starred in a satirical play written and cast by a classmate, B. J. Novak, who would later join him on The Office. Both young men graduated from Newton South High School in 1997.

  Before starting college, Krasinski spent six months in Costa Rica as an English-as-a-foreign-language instructor. At a beach in Manuel Antonio National Park, a woman was caught in a rip tide, and he saved her from drowning. He said that what he had learned from his mother, who was a lifeguard, helped him do it.

  At Brown University, Krasinski studied English and playwriting. His honors thesis was titled "Contents Under Pressure," and he graduated in 2001. He joined a sketch comedy group called Out of Bounds and helped coach youth basketball at the Gordon School in East Providence, Rhode Island. After Brown, he attended the National Theater Institute in Waterford, Connecticut.

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• 3. Scranton Sales Rep

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  In 2000, Krasinski interned as a scriptwriter on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. After graduating from Brown, he moved to New York to pursue acting. He appeared in commercials, guest-starred on television shows and performed readings of off-Broadway plays, all while working as a waiter. He also starred in What the Eunuch Saw, a play written and directed by his former college classmates Emily O'Dell and Isaac Robert Hurwitz.

  The break arrived in 2004, when NBC cast him in The Office, an American adaptation of a successful British series. The show is a mockumentary about life at a mid-sized paper supply company. Krasinski played Jim Halpert, an intelligent and mild-mannered sales representative. In later seasons Jim became co-manager of the Dunder Mifflin paper distribution company in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His character and Jenna Fischer's were also the series' love interests.

  Before filming, Krasinski visited the real Scranton and interviewed employees at actual paper companies. He later shot the Scranton footage that appears in the show's opening credits.

  Between 2005 and 2013, Krasinski appeared in every episode. He also worked as a producer and an occasional director, and the episodes he directed include "Sabre." In the third season, his pay per episode rose to four times what he had earned in each of the first two.

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• 4. Actor For Hire

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  In 2006, Krasinski co-starred with Andrew Keegan and Lacey Chabert in A New Wave, an independently produced, direct-to-DVD heist comedy from Jason Carvey. The next year he played Brevin opposite Anna Faris and Danny Masterson in Gregg Araki's stoner comedy Smiley Face, which drew largely positive reviews. He also starred with Mandy Moore and Robin Williams in License to Wed in 2007. Critics disliked that romantic comedy, yet it was a commercial success.

  Kinsey, Duane Hopwood, Jarhead, The Holiday, Shrek the Third, For Your Consideration and Dreamgirls all carried his name in their casts. On television he guest-starred on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Without a Trace, Ed, American Dad! and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

  In 2008, Krasinski appeared with Renée Zellweger and George Clooney in Leatherheads, a period comedy about the early years of professional American football that Clooney directed. Krasinski played Carter "the Bullet" Rutherford, Princeton University's football star and a decorated hero of the First World War. MTV.com described him as "an actor who's able to project both boyish warmth and intellectual concern."

  Two more films followed in 2009. In Away We Go, directed by Sam Mendes, he and Maya Rudolph played a couple searching North America for the perfect community in which to start a family. Critics responded warmly. In Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy It's Complicated, he joined an ensemble with Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, Lake Bell and Alec Baldwin. The film was a box office success and won the National Board of Review award for Best Ensemble Cast.

  Something Borrowed, a 2011 romantic comedy based on Emily Giffin's novel, also starred Ginnifer Goodwin, Kate Hudson and Colin Egglesfield. Reviews of the film were negative, but his performance was widely praised. He was also one of the top candidates to play Steve Rogers in Captain America: The First Avenger.

  Big Miracle in 2012 paired him with Drew Barrymore. The film covers Operation Breakthrough, the 1988 international effort to free gray whales trapped in ice near Point Barrow, Alaska. Krasinski played a news reporter named Adam Carlson. That same year, Ry Russo-Young's independent drama Nobody Walks cast him as Peter, a sound designer and father of two who develops feelings for a young artist. Variety's Peter Debruge wrote that Krasinski's likability made Peter's behavior more interesting. The film premiered in competition at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and won a special Jury Prize.

  Dry Powder, an Off-Broadway play that ran at The Public Theater in New York from March to May 2016, starred him alongside Hank Azaria, Claire Danes and Sanjit De Silva. Thomas Kail directed. The run sold out before opening, and Krasinski received the Theatre World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance. In September 2016 he also appeared in Past Forward, a black and white short film for the fashion house Prada. David O. Russell directed it, and it premiered at Milan Fashion Week.

  Also in 2016, Michael Bay's 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi cast him as a former US Navy SEAL. The film is based on Mitchell Zuckoff's 2014 book and follows six members of the Annex Security Team defending the American compound in Benghazi, Libya, after attacks on the 11th of September 2012. Krasinski trained extensively for the part. Cameron Crowe's Aloha, with Rachel McAdams, Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone, drew a negative reaction and controversy. Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit, set during the 1967 riots, was his only release of 2017.

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• 5. Ideas Behind The Camera

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  Brief Interviews with Hideous Men marked Krasinski's directorial debut in 2009. He wrote the screenplay from David Foster Wallace's collection of short stories, produced the film and played a minor role. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on the 19th of January 2009 and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. Critic A.O. Scott wrote that the experiment did not quite succeed but showed enough intelligence to be worth the attempt. Elizabeth Weitzman of the New York Daily News said Krasinski deserved credit for taking on such difficult material.

  Promised Land began with an idea of his own. Krasinski came up with the premise and developed it with the writer Dave Eggers, and the two then pitched it to Matt Damon. The film follows two corporate salespeople who visit a rural town to buy drilling rights from residents. It draws on Ian Urbina's New York Times series Drilling Down. Gus Van Sant directed, while Krasinski and Damon starred, and Krasinski co-produced and co-wrote it. It was released on the 28th of December 2012 and received a Special Mention Award at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2013.

  In 2014, Krasinski worked with Damon again on Manchester by the Sea, which reached theaters in 2016. Kenneth Lonergan wrote and directed it from an original idea of Krasinski's, and Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams starred. It earned six nominations at the 89th Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

  On the 24th of January 2016, The Hollars premiered at Sundance. Krasinski directed this comedy-drama and acted in it alongside Sharlto Copley, Charlie Day, Richard Jenkins, Anna Kendrick and Margo Martindale. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said Krasinski took on the most clichéd genre in the business, the dysfunctional family dramedy, and handled it "with uncommon humor and compassion." In October 2016 Krasinski also directed a one-night live reading of the Good Will Hunting screenplay at New York's Skirball Theater, with original stars Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and with Emily Blunt.

  The Hollars was the first feature produced by Sunday Night, the production company Krasinski founded in 2013 with Allyson Seeger. The company has an overall deal with Twentieth Century Fox Television. With Stephen Merchant, Krasinski and Seeger became executive producers of Dream Corp, LLC, an Adult Swim sitcom created by Daniel Stessen that mixes live action and animation. Lost star Jon Gries co-starred.

  Lip Sync Battle grew out of a brainstorming session. Merchant, Krasinski and Krasinski's wife, Emily Blunt, were looking for an idea for his upcoming appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Fallon turned the result into a recurring segment, and a full series followed on the cable network Spike on Thursday the 2nd of April 2015. Its premiere was the highest-rated non-scripted premiere in Spike's history. In July 2016 it received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Structured Reality Program, one of three such nominations Krasinski earned for co-creating it.

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• 6. The Quiet Place

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  In 2018, Krasinski directed and co-wrote A Quiet Place, a post-apocalyptic horror thriller released by Paramount Pictures. He also co-starred in it with his wife, Emily Blunt. The film scored 96 percent at Rotten Tomatoes across 367 reviews. Its success led Time magazine to name him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and it spawned a film series.

  Jack Ryan premiered on Amazon Video on the 31st of August 2018. Krasinski produces the series and plays the title character, making him the fifth actor to portray Ryan after Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine. Amazon renewed it for a second season four months before the premiere, after the critical and commercial success of A Quiet Place.

  A Quiet Place Part II was first scheduled for the 20th of March 2020. Theaters began shutting the week of the 16th of March, and the release slipped. Krasinski wrote and directed the sequel and took a supporting role. It finally opened on the 28th of May 2021 to positive reviews and became a box office success. On Rotten Tomatoes it earned 91 percent across 355 reviews. The site's consensus called it "nerve-wracking" and said it expanded "the terrifying world of the franchise without losing track of its heart."

  Paramount signed a first-look deal with Sunday Night Productions in May 2021. Paramount had already acquired IF, a fantasy comedy, in October 2019. Krasinski wrote, directed, produced and co-starred in it with Ryan Reynolds, who also produced. The cast includes Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fiona Shaw, Louis Gossett Jr. and Steve Carell. It was released on the 24th of May 2024.

  In August 2021, Krasinski made a cameo in Free Guy as a silhouetted gamer. In May 2022 he made his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut as Reed Richards, also called Mister Fantastic, in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. He appeared as a member of the Illuminati after many years of fan casting and his own interest in the role. The next month he voiced Superman in the animated film DC League of Super-Pets.

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• 7. Some Good News

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  In March 2020, Krasinski started a YouTube web series called Some Good News, or SGN, as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its purpose was to highlight good news. Guests included Steve Carell, Robert De Niro, the entire original Broadway cast of Hamilton, Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Steven Spielberg, Jon Stewart and Malala Yousafzai. The cast of The Office also appeared.

  To officiate a virtual wedding for the series, Krasinski became ordained as a minister in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The nine-episode series drew 72 million views and 2.58 million subscribers. On the 22nd of May 2020, ViacomCBS announced it had acquired the show for CBS All Access. Krasinski later confirmed that he and ViacomCBS did not move forward with those plans. Some Good News stayed in its original format on YouTube and on secondary platforms such as Snapchat.

  In May 2020, he partnered with Sevenly, 5th Element and the Starbucks Foundation to launch Some Good Merch, an online store. Its shirts, mugs, tote bags, ornaments and reusable face masks carried donated fan art from the show and artwork by Krasinski's daughters. Buyers chose one of six charities to receive all profits, and the Starbucks Foundation agreed to match up to one million dollars. Early donations went to World Central Kitchen, the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund, Direct Relief, Trauma Free World and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

  Money sent to Direct Relief, in coordination with a team at the First Nations Fund, became thousands of items of protective gear, face masks, sanitizer and other medical supplies. They went to the Navajo Nation and to the White River Indian Hospital on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, which serves over 17,000 tribal members. In June 2020, after widespread protests against racial injustice, the store added the Black Lives Matter organization and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund as options.

  The show created other giving opportunities from March to December 2020. Through AT&T, all nurses and doctors in the United States received three months of free cellphone service. Boston front-line medical workers received lifetime season pass tickets to Red Sox games. PepsiCo agreed to donate to the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund through the show. In the ninth episode, a holiday special in December 2020, FedEx committed to donating to the Toys for Tots Holiday Drive.

  Krasinski's 40th birthday in October 2019 brought a viral fundraising campaign for Family Reach, a Boston-based nonprofit that gives financial help to families coping with cancer treatment. He and Blunt kept raising money for the group through its Hope for the Holidays campaign, and in 2020 they raised more for it. In 2018 the couple had worked with the Omaze foundation for the Malala Fund, which advocates for education rights for girls and women.

  On the 20th of January 2021, Krasinski spoke from his home office at the inauguration celebration for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Later that month he hosted his first episode of Saturday Night Live, which 6.69 million viewers watched.

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• 8. Voice And Home

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  In March 2006, Krasinski began narrating a series of Ask.com commercials. Apple TV, Verizon Wireless, Esurance, BlackBerry Storm, My Coke Rewards and Carnival Cruise Lines later hired him for narration, and Gap used him in print advertisements. In a popular 2020 Super Bowl spot for the Hyundai Sonata's Smart Park feature, he appeared with fellow Bostonians Chris Evans, Rachel Dratch and David Ortiz. He pronounced the feature "Smaht Park."

  His voice has carried other work as well. Krasinski provided voice-over in Monsters University in 2013 and narrated the Discovery Channel documentary series Head Games in 2012. He narrated the children's book Curious George Goes to the Hospital. That recording appears in Curious George: 75th Anniversary Edition, a collection he narrated too.

  People magazine named him one of its Sexiest Men Alive in 2006, 2009-2018 and 2019. In 2024 he was the very first man on the list.

  That same year, Krasinski was criticized for appearing in a Canadian television commercial for Rogers. The company was locking out Canadian union actors during a labour dispute, and many saw his appearance as scabbing. Critics said it undermined efforts by the actors union ACTRA to end the lockout.

  In 2011, Krasinski starred with Alec Baldwin in a New Era and MLB ad campaign. The ads played on the rivalry between Krasinski's team, the Boston Red Sox, and Baldwin's, the New York Yankees.

  Krasinski began dating the English actress Emily Blunt in November 2008. They became engaged in August 2009 and married on the 10th of July 2010 in Como, Italy. They have two daughters. The family primarily lives in Brooklyn and previously kept a residence in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles.

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