Lookinland was born in 1960 in Mount Pleasant, Utah, a small town eighty miles (128 km) south of Salt Lake City. He has a younger brother, Todd, who starred in The Blue Bird with Elizabeth Taylor, and an older sister, Terese. Lookinland grew up in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is a self-professed Conservationist and "camping nut". He attended the private Chadwick School, on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, in Southern California, and graduated in 1978.