John Krasinski had real limp after stunt in ‘Fountain of Youth’

Becoming an action star comes with a high price — just ask John Krasinski.

Though he’s well known for having a nine-season desk job on The Office, Krasinski has lately been seen dodging explosions and leaping from helicopters in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. So when he signed up to star in Guy Ritchie’s latest action flick Fountain of Youth, the director assumed Krasinski would be game for a few more death-defying feats.

“It was kind of like a Jedi mind trick,” Krasinski recalled during a Monday visit to the Today show. “He just assumed that I could do everything and he’s so sweet and bubbly, so he was like, ‘Johnny, we’re gonna have a train, it’s gonna be moving. Just run at it and jump on the back.’ And then I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, when are we doing that?’ and he was like, ‘We’re rolling — here we go.'”

Referencing a scene in the movie that sees his character limping, Krasinski admitted that it was a genuine reaction to pulling off the stunt.

“That was a real limp,” he shared. “Turns out dehydration is real. My legs locked up and I ran like a Tin Man for [the] train.”

Aside from his pained legs, Krasinski did value the chance to perform his own stunt: “I was like, ‘If I miss the train, I will never get to do this again’ so I did it,” he said.

On the bright side, Krasinski had the chance to field advice from the movie’s stunt team, who offered a surprising solution to his locked legs.

“All the stunt guys were like, ‘Just drink a coke,'” he recalled. “And I was like ‘Really?!’ and it worked.”

Ritchie’s latest film stars Krasinski and Natalie Portman as estranged siblings Luke and Charlotte Purdue, who partner on a global heist to find the titular fountain of youth. Asked whether he would go searching for the fabled fountain himself, Krasinski said he prefers Richie’s sentimental read on the myth. 

“Guy was talking about it a lot while we were shooting the movie,” he explained. “‘What if the fountain of youth was inside you and it was actually you changing your own life to make yourself happier and people around you happier?’ And I was like, I like that version. It’s very deep. He’s a very deep, smart, fun guy.”

Ritchie previously told Entertainment Weekly that the film was “in the vein of Indiana Jones but contemporary” and promised an action-packed experience, not unlike his previous title, 2024’s  Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

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Asked to compare the films, Richie said, “Oh, bigger. It’s an expensive film — it’s three times the budget of Ministry, and you can feel that. It’s pretty relentless once the action starts, and it starts pretty quickly. So yeah, there’s a lot of action.”

Fountain of Youth also stars Domhnall Gleeson, Benjamin Chivers, and Eiza González. It will be available to stream on AppleTV+ on May 23.