J.P. Manoux grew up on the beaches of Santa Barbara, California, the oldest of seven. He was involved in children's theater productions and took tap-dancing lessons before attending the Thacher School in Ojai, California. Curiously, that tiny boarding school would provide no less than three doctors for NBC's long running hospital drama ER (1994) (Noah Wyle and Leland Orser, the other two). As college applications approached, Manoux's drama teacher recommended the undergraduate theater department at Northwestern University.
