John Krasinski claims he will beg every season to keep his job playing Jim Halpert on NBC's hugely popular The Office.

LOS ANGELES -- Hollywood is hell-bent on making John Krasinski a movie star -- so who is the 29-year-old to argue? In the past two years, the Boston-bred star of TV's The Office has landed coveted roles in License to Wed with Robin Williams and Mandy Moore, Leatherheads with George Clooney and Renee Zellweger, the Sundance entry Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (which he also adapted and directed) and this month's romantic dramedy, Away We Go. And if that wasn't enough, he's currently shooting the next comedy from director Nancy Meyers (Something's Gotta Give) opposite Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin; it will be out at Christmastime.

For the moment, though, his mind is on Away We Go, in which he and Saturday Night Live's Maya Rudolph play a rudderless couple in rural Colorado which, after learning she's pregnant, embarks on a soul-searching road trip to settle on the perfect place to raise a family. The movie is directed by Oscar-winner Sam Mendes (American Beauty) and co-penned by alt-lit author Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius).

Krasinski sat down with Sun Media recently at a Beverly Hills hotel to discuss the movie, his career, fame and why he's not yet ready to put in for a transfer from his small-screen gig:

Sun Media: So, no plans to exit The Office?

Krasinski: That role, in particular for me because it has real moments too, is one of the greatest gifts you could have. The Office is not something you break away from. People are like, 'When are you going to break away and make movies?' It's like, 'No, I'll beg for my job every year on The Office.'

SM: But you've also been working non-stop for the past two years in films.

JK: At some point I'll slow down. It's just hard to pass up something like (Away We Go). I also think, to be honest, it's such a lucky existence, that when you get the shot to do it, you go all the way. So you work 12 months a year -- you're lucky to work 12 months a year, let's be honest ... I've got to hit it hard as long as people want me and keep working.

SM: This movie is about two people who early on ask themselves 'Are we f----ups?' Considering where you're at in your career, is that a feeling you can relate to?

JK: I think at this moment I would admit I have a very lucky existence. But I think the movie does represent a lot of people. I don't want to say it's representative of the times because that's too big. But for me personally, I have these conversations with my friends every day. I think 15 or 20 years ago, if you looked back, you got married at 20, you had a baby at 21 and that was it. You had a wife and a child and you provided for that child. Nowadays, there's that more liberal sense of freedom in that, 'Maybe I didn't choose the right job,' 'Maybe I didn't choose the right person' and there's this constant state of flux. I think there's something incredibly liberating about it, but also incredibly terrifying about it ... (So in the movie) the baby is just the catalyst to say, 'Wait a minute, I'm an insurance salesman? We live in Colorado?' So as far as personally, obviously things are going so well now, but absolutely, I'm always thinking about the existential search of finding the right person and being a good friend, being a good part of the family, and having nieces and nephews I don't see as much as I'd like to because they're far away.

SM: This is probably the most dramatic part you've had.

JK: For Maya and I people are probably like, 'How are they going to do something dramatic?' And Maya said it best, 'I hope I'm as good an actor as I am in life, which is sometimes I have good days and I'm really funny and sometimes I have bad days and I'm bummed out and I'm not that funny at all.' She said, 'I hope I'm able to play both those things because I live through them every day.' I thought that was just a genius way to look at it.

SM: And even when the movie is funny, you're playing it straight throughout.

JK: Sam kept saying, 'Keep playing real, keep playing the heart of it.' He saw that in every scene. The jokes are going to work or not -- that job's done.

SM: Which isn't unlike The Office.

JK: We pay attention to that a lot. The similarity between the two is that -- at least for my character on The Office -- you play the scene for heart and you try to be as real as possible. And if the jokes are funny, it's because of the situation and people have been there before. And this movie is the same way ... They're grounded in reality, as ridiculous as things get.

SM: Usually there's always an element of boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl in romantic stories, but that doesn't happen here. Your relationship is never really in doubt.

JK: Yeah, and I'm a sentimental guy, so to see this relationship and that it wasn't about flowers and diamonds, but it was about secret language and people who can look at each other and tell a story, those are relationships I not only admire but pray to be in one day.

SM: You have tremendous chemistry with Maya. Did that come naturally?

JK: I have no talent. It's all a ruse ... I can only imagine doing that with no chemistry and having to pretend. It's probably harder to do the acting job. I think it was all about taking the energy we had in real life and making minor adjustments. Maya's a way different person than she is in the movie, and I hope I am different than I am in a movie.

SM: You don't really see a lot of you outside of work. You're not on TMZ every day.

JK: No, it's pretty simple, I'm pretty boring. I don't usually stumble out of bars or pull my pants down. I have to do that more often, I guess. Look, any sort of attention, I find, I get is because they were there for someone else and I happened to be there. 'By the way, John was also there.' The fact people are paying attention at all, it means the show's going well. You take it. But I haven't been chased or stalked or anything like that, thank God. Any time I hear about that, it's a bizarre world that people care that much about what people are wearing or getting the shot of someone falling down. I pray that when I fall down, there's not a camera there.

SM: Do you think you're pretty much the same guy you were before anyone knew who John Krasinski was?

JK: Someone told me -- maybe it was George (Clooney) -- that you are who you came in as. You don't really change. You can exaggerate that a bit. If you were a bad person, you get worse and if you're a good person, you get better. I think that's really true. I was really lucky to have a great upbringing and I'm a pretty tame guy. I definitely prefer a house party in someone's living room to going out to a bar, so hopefully that saves me.

Small screen to bigtime

For every George Clooney or Robin Williams, there's a Don Johnson or David Caruso. It's still too early to tell the long-term trajectory of John Krasinski's career, but if he does successfully transition from TV to film, he'll be in good company:

Tom Hanks: Before back-to-back Oscars, before 1989's Turner and Hooch, even before 1984's Splash, Hanks was known as one half of the cross-dressing duo from Bosom Buddies (the other half being Peter Scolari, who would go on to Newhart).

John Travolta: He was just dim but affable sweathog Vinnie Barbarino on Welcome Back, Kotter before 1977's Saturday Night Fever made Travolta a disco-dancing, white-suited pop culture icon.

Michael J. Fox: Family Ties' Alex P. Keaton was a last-minute addition to 1985's Back to the Future. The time-travelling smash helped make the Canadian a big-screen commodity. Although his dramatic turns (Casualties of War) generated mixed results, he headlined a string of hit comedies in the late 1980s and early 1990s (The Secret of My Success, Doc Hollywood) before returning to TV with Spin City.

Will Smith: True, he was a lightweight rapper first, but Smith's star truly rose on TV's Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which he immediately followed with summer-time blockbusters Independence Day (1996) and Men in Black (1997).

Bruce Willis: The wisecracking motor-mouth from TV's Moonlighting an action hero? No one believed it -- until 1988's Die Hard gave Willis a career-making role that put him shoulder-to-shoulder with the muscle-bound likes of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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