10 Things You Don’t Know About ‘The Office’ Alum and ‘Code 3’ Star Rainn Wilson

Rainn Wilson stars as a burned-out paramedic who embarks on one final 24-hour shift to train his replacement, only to find the night spiraling into chaos in the upcoming action comedy Code 3.

Here are 10 things you probably don’t know about the 59-year-old star of The Office.

1. He was born Rainn Percival Dietrich Wilson in Seattle to novelist, artist and business consultant dad Robert G. Wilson and yoga instructor and actress mom Shay Cooper. “My dad wanted to name me Rainer after Rainer Maria Rilke, the famous German poet, but thought that having Mount Rainier so nearby would confuse things, so he went for Rainn,” he told The Seattle Times. “God only knows why he added the extra ‘n.’ ‘Rain’ was probably too hippie-ish, even for him.”

2. Rainn was about 2 years old when his parents divorced. His father remarried, and Rainn spent ages 3 to 5 living with his dad and stepmom Kristin in Nicaragua before the family moved back to Seattle. When Rainn was in high school, the family moved to Wilmette, Ill., to serve at the Baha’i National Center.

3. While at New Trier High School outside Chicago, he had his own radio show, Uncle Rainn’s Story Hour. “I wanted there to be some gimmick, so I would play punk rock and new wave music that I loved, in those days,” Rainn recalls on the Future of StoryTelling podcast. “And I would read children’s stories … in between punk rock songs.”

4. Also in high school, Rainn was in a rock cover band called Collected Moss.

5. He went to Tufts University in Medford, Mass., before transferring to the University of Washington in Seattle. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in drama in 1986, then attended New York University’s Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts. He was a member of The Acting Company and drove a moving van in between acting gigs.

6. Rainn is best known for his role as Dwight Schrute on 188 episodes of The Office from 2005 to 2013.

7. He says of his wardrobe on The Office according to Hollywood Insider: “I kind of feel like my grandmother could play Dwight.”

8. Rainn has been open on The Diary Of A CEO podcast about his mental health issues, which he traces back to being abandoned by his mother: “These confluences of pain and difficulty and abuse and neglect, they caused me a lot of suffering later on, but at the same time, they caused me to be driven [and] to try to be the best version of myself.”

9. He has survived two muggings, and during one he was hit on the back of the head with a stick.

10. Rainn is not worried about being typecast as Dwight Schrute, declaring, “I know that I am a well-rounded, capable actor and I’m going to have a long career,” per NBC News.