Born in New York City, Savage was raised in Sleepy Hollow in Westchester County. His father, Whitney Lee Savage, was a painter, filmmaker, and animator known for his work on Sesame Street, and has a permanent exhibit in the Avampato Discovery Museum. His mother is a psychotherapist. His sister Kate Savage is also an artist.

Adam Savage began acting as a child, and has had five years of acting school. His early credits include voicing animated characters that his father produced for Sesame Street, Mr. Whipple’s stock boy “Jimmy” in a Charmin commercial, a helper in the special effects of Star Wars, and a drowning young man saved by a lifeguard in the 1985 Billy Joel music video “You’re Only Human (Second Wind).” He attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for acting for six months before dropping out.

Describing the early abandonment of his acting career, Savage said “…by the time I was, I guess probably nineteen, I had passed on that in favor of doing stuff with my hands – graphic design, assistant animation in New York, and then eventually working in theater in San Francisco, and film special effects. Then MythBusters came along and it was the perfect marriage of two things, performance and special effects.”