Jon Hamm More at IMDbPro »
Being in an ensemble cast is the best. You're all in the same boat. You're all together" - on being part of "The Division" (2001) cast.
I have a lady, she's a great lady. I love her a lot, she loves me. We're on the same page. Whenever that day happens when we're not on the same page we'll move forward with it. We're interested in having our lives be our lives right now and not a third person's vis-à-vis marriage and whatever that means. - on his relationship with long-time girlfriend Jennifer Westfeldt.
[On his advice to aspiring actors] I guess I would say, "Don't be afraid to fail." It's not the end of the world, and in many ways, it's the first step toward learning something and getting better at it. If you live your entire life never having failed at anything, it's got to be a weirdly false existence in so many ways. So I think that-depending upon the age, obviously-that would be my bit of advice. Just don't be afraid to fail.
[On teaching acting] I went back to my old high school after I graduated college. I didn't have any money. Literally, no money. So I had to find a job, and I started waiting tables a little bit, and I had the idea that I would go back and talk to my old high-school acting teacher. I said, "Hey, man, what do you think of this idea? Would it be helpful if I came back, and taught all the classes you don't want to teach, or that you're too busy to teach? And helped you out? I'm cheap." And he said, "That's a great idea. I'd love the help." And so we together pitched it to the headmaster, and he was like, "Sounds great. It's too late to start this year, why don't you start next year?" So I took a year, I waited tables, and then I taught school for a year, and after that I was 25, I think, and I was ready to try to go. I had a little bit of money saved, and my car sort of ran, so I was like, "You know what, I'm gonna try it before I get any older and I lose any momentum I have." And west I came.
I went to a high school where you were encouraged to do a lot of different things, so there wasn't this great divide between the jocks and the theater guys, or the smart kids and the stoners, or whatever. It was like everybody was a little bit of everything, and that was encouraged. I was a pretty serious athlete for a long time, and thought maybe that's what I wanted to do with my life, but I was also a diligent student, and really wanted to achieve in that area, too. And theater was kind of a challenge, like, "Oh, maybe I could do that, that looks like fun." So I started doing it a little bit in 11th and 12th grade, and got pretty good feedback, and kept getting cast to do bigger and bigger parts. And I started to think, "Oh, maybe this is something I could do." But I went to college and kind of forgot about it until I was a junior, and I randomly answered an ad in the paper for some production of Midsummer Night's Dream that was coming through. They were casting students as the young lovers, and having an open audition. I remember looking at my roommate and going, "You know what, fuck it, I'm gonna audition for this thing. What's the worst that could happen?" And I did, and I got it. And then the theater department was like, "You should be in the theater department, why are you not? You're good at this." Enough people kept saying, "You know what? You're kind of good at this. Why aren't you doing it for real?" that finally I started listening, and over the next couple of years at school, I ended up getting a theater scholarship, and doing close to 15 plays over two years, and really focusing on it. But at every level, you're constantly reminded that there are other people that do it better than you and have been doing it longer than you. It was a real wakeup call coming to L.A., where it's, "Well, you're not the go-to guy that you were in the University Of Missouri theater department. Now there's 100,000 people ahead of you in line." But for whatever reason, it didn't faze me. I just kept plugging away, and putting one foot in front of the other, and showing up.
(On landing his role in Mad Men) It was amazing. I read the script, and it was for AMC, and I thought, "They've never done anything that's remotely like a TV show, so what's that going to be like?" I read the script for Mad Men and I loved it. Then I realized that a guy who wrote for The Sopranos, Matt Weiner, created it, so I thought, "Okay, that's pretty cool." But I never thought they'd cast me-I mean, I thought they'd go with one of the five guys who look like me but are movie stars. Obviously, they didn't. I literally had to go through six or seven auditions. They flew me to New York to meet all the people at AMC. My final audition was at that bar on the roof of the Hotel Gansevoort. When we were riding down on the elevator, the woman in charge of whatever the decision-making process was told me, "You got the job."
(2010) I certainly go after what I want. But I just have detached amusement about a lot of it. Because it's silly. This job is ridiculous. There's a line from 30 Rock that Tracy Morgan says that makes me laugh out loud: 'I remember that movie-I got paid one million teacher salaries.' It is what it is.
