John Krasinski has gotten used to navigating his life in the public eye.
But when it comes to social media and online comments, Krasinski, 45, opted out of reading them years ago. "I remember on The Office, the computers we had at our desks were live, and that was the early days of like Myspace and IMDb chat rooms and stuff," he tells PEOPLE for this week's cover story.
His costar Jenna Fischer "was super into it and she'd go, 'Guys, last night's episode, they loved it and blah blah, blah. And so we'd all jump on," the actor recalls. "One of my first forays down that rabbit hole, I was like, 'Oh my God, what did they say?'"
Some of the comments made the actor immediately stop reading. "It was like, 'Oh dear Lord.' And I've never gone back. I've never gone back," he insists. "Truly, that scared the absolute hell out of me, those chat rooms in the early days. So I can't imagine where it's gone since."
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Luckily for the actor, he found even more success after nine years on The Office when he cowrote, directed and starred alongside his wife of 14 years, actress Emily Blunt, 41, in the 2018 thriller A Quiet Place. It went on to spawn two sequels, while Krasinski, who got ripped for Michael Bay’s 13 Hours, stayed in fighting shape to play the titular Jack Ryan for four seasons on the popular Prime Video series, now set to become a film.
Krasinski says the first time he even knew he was famous was in New York City where he lives. "It must have been season two of The Office because iPods had come out and I had no idea what an iPod was," he recalls.
"I remember a guy came up to me on the street and he held up an iPod and he said, 'Look, you're on my iPod.' And the screen was tiny, and I couldn't see who it was, but it looked a lot like me. And I thought, 'I don't know if that's fame or if that person's going to kill me, but either way, that person knows me and that's a stranger.' So that was that was a big, big moment."
For more of Krasinki's exclusive interview and photos, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday.
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