Guinee, who has two brothers and two sisters, was born in Los Angeles, California and raised in Illinois and Texas. He attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas before he founded a theater group in Texas. Later he moved to New York in order to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Following this study, he attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, where he graduated and had his film debut. He met his wife, Daisy Foote, at the production of Hallmark Hall of Fame: Lily Dale (1996). Foote is the daughter of 1962 Academy Award-winning Screenwriter and Pulitzer Prize-winner Horton Foote, who adapted Lily Dale for the film himself.