At Brown University in Rhode Island, Krasinski planned to play basketball and study to be an English teacher. Walking back from the gym one day, realizing that he wasn’t cut out for basketball, he noticed a flier to audition for a sketch comedy group.

Long before John Krasinski landed the role as the droll, mischievous Jim Halpert on “The Office,” before there were small parts in the films “Jarhead” and “Dreamgirls” and leading ones in “License to Wed” and his newest, “Away We Go,” he had a life-changing experience at Newton South High School, courtesy of his pal B.J. Novak, who plays Ryan Howard on “The Office.”





“B.J. and I had known each other since we were 13, when we played on the same Little League team – the Orioles,” Krasinski said during a stop in Boston to promote “Away We Go,” the romantic comedy he stars in with Maya Rudolph.

Krasinski and Novak were pals throughout junior high and high school. In his senior year, Krasinski, a cross-country runner and basketball player, decided not to participate in a sport. Novak took that opportunity to invite him to be in the annual parody of student and teacher life at Newton South.

“He asked me to be one of the leads,” Krasinski said. “I remember saying that I couldn’t act, but B.J. said, ‘Just trust me,’ and then he said, ‘I think you’re funny.’” Krasinski did it, and had a ball.

Cut to Brown University in Rhode Island, where Krasinski planned to play basketball and study to be an English teacher. Walking back from the gym one day, realizing that he wasn’t cut out for basketball, he noticed a flier to audition for a sketch comedy group.

“It was because of that high school experience that I thought, ‘Maybe this will be fun, too,’” he said. “And it was.”

Krasinski eventually took to acting. His first role at Brown was as a transvestite in Tennessee Williams’ “Camino Real,” of which he said, “Now that’s the way to start out!”

He was also drawn to writing, and by junior year he was part of Brown’s honors playwriting program.

“I was acting through all of this,” he said. “Writing was that other side of acting; it helped my acting tremendously to write the characters.”

But he was still acting for fun, not with any thought of a career in it. Until, after graduating Brown, he went to the National Theater Institute.

“I had taken one acting class at Brown – a great one with Mark Cohen. But I didn’t have any real training until I got to NTI. That’s where I started learning Shakespeare and timing and the real brass tacks. But my best teachers said that acting is bringing something unique to it, that the genius of it is that you do your own thing.”

Krasinski started doing commercials and taking small parts in films and on TV shows. During a visit to California to look for work, he got both unlucky, then lucky.

“I had a meeting with a casting director who said the worst thing you can hear as an actor: ‘Oh, man, you just missed this movie ‘Jarhead.’ You would have been perfect for it.’”

He smiles and shakes his head slowly when recalling this. “But about a month later, she called and said someone was dropping out, would I come in and read for the director, Sam Mendes.” He got the small part, stayed in touch with Mendes, auditioned for but lost out on a role in his “Revolutionary Road” because he was too young to play the character, and last year got a call from Mendes, who was then casting for “Away We Go.”

“I was at my house when Sam called,” he said. “He said, ‘I have this script and I can’t stop seeing you in this role.’ Sam later told me that my audition for ‘Revolutionary Road’ was what made him think of me first for the part.”

In “Away We Go,” Krasinski plays Burt, opposite Maya Rudolph’s Verona, a deliriously happy unmarried couple who are about to have their first child. They are trying to find their place in the world, traveling across America, visiting friends and relatives, to see where to settle down.

“In comedies, especially, there’s always this huge pitfall in a relationship,” Krasinski said. “Unfortunately, the pitfall is usually infidelity or something else really bad. Sometimes, after seeing some of these big comedies, I’ve thought at the end of it, ‘Wait, he cheated on her, and now he’s sorry, and now I’m supposed to believe that they’re happily ever after.’ I’m a sucker. I was really happy to see a relationship where they loved each other, and they just loved each other the whole time. Believe it or not, I think that’s still real.”

He gets to exercise his acting chops in the film, as he plays up against a diverse set of characters, ranging from Rudolph’s calm, focused Verona to Allison Janney’s nutcase Lily.

“I think the greatest lesson you learn in any acting class is that acting is reacting and listening,” he said. “That’s so true when you’re working with anybody. You’ve got Maya, who’s delivering this unbelievably beautiful performance that’s so controlled, and then you add Allison, who delivers an equally beautiful performance, but goes so over the top. Whether you like that character or not, that person exists; we all know her. So it’s just a heightened energy, and you feel a little nervous, as you would around someone like that.

“I think some of the best performances I have done or will do are because of the people I work with.”

Inevitably he led right into talk about a certain TV show.

“Everybody on ‘The Office’ is reacting off each other,” he said. “And we’re all having a blast.” He thought about that for a moment, then added, “It never feels like work to me when you’re on ‘The Office’ as your day job,’ and then you get to moonlight in movies like ‘Away We Go.’ It’s pretty much a totally surreal experience.”

“Away We Go” opens Friday.