Source: Daily Record
Date: August 29, 2010
By: Lesley Roberts

HE IS the sleek, brooding star of Mad Men, the hottest show to come out of New York since Sex And The City took British screens by storm.

And hunky Jon Hamm has become sizzling Hollywood property himself since landing the role of flawed hero Don Draper – a ruthless advertising executive in 1960s New York.

The series, which is up for 17 awards at today’s Emmys and makes its long-awaited return to BBC4 next month, has effectively worked as a slick marketing campaign for Hamm.

The 39-year-old actor struggled for years to land any significant work before being signed up for Mad Men’s stylish, pin-sharp interpretation of the utterly ruthless world of Madison Avenue advertising agencies.

And he is refreshingly frank when discussing his road to the top in the equally cut-throat world of showbiz. Ask him how to get ahead in acting and he’ll tell it straight – get lucky.

Hamm said: “What’s the secret of my success? Be unemployed for 15 years, wait a lot of tables, bartend, run out of money several times then get a hugely successful, internationally acclaimed hit show. It gets a lot easier after that.”

It certainly seems to suit Hamm to play a hard-drinking, hard-smoking, cheating, lying womaniser with so many skeletons lurking in his closet that it’s a wonder there’s room for any of his immaculate suits.

The dark and secretive Draper has won Hamm lots of awards – including a gong from the Screen Actors Guild and a Golden Globe – and worldwide recognition from the acting fraternity that shunned him for so long.

The talent agency who took him on in 1996, when he first arrived in LA, dumped him after two fruitless years, leaving him to work as a waiter. They probably regret that now.

It was another couple of years before he started picking up small acting parts and when the breakthrough role of Draper was presented to him in 2007, even Hamm was resigned to the fact that he lacked the movie-star status to win it.

But how times have changed. Mad Men fans are so obsessive about the adventures of Draper and his cohorts that the BBC agreed to broadcast the new series – the fourth run of the show – around four months early so it’s closer to the American screening. They are hoping that impatient British viewers will be satisfied by their concession and, therefore, be less likely to look online for illegal downloads.

For Hamm, it’s still a bit surprising to be in such demand. The memories of many years working behind a bar, picking up bit-parts where he could, are very much alive in his mind.

He added: “I’m incredibly grateful to be sitting here, working on this show I am tremendously proud of.

“It’s what you dream of when you set down the road of being an actor.

“I worked very hard to put myself in the position to get this job but any of this stuff comes down to blind luck at a certain level. Playing Don has been a watershed moment in my career. It’s the role of a lifetime.

“If you’d asked me 10 years ago what I would like to achieve, I would have said I’m happy to have a job on a commercial selling floor wax.

“But the opportunities this show has afforded me enable me to be significantly more choosy and say, ‘I want to do something like this’.

“And people return phone calls now – which is different.”

It has done Missouri-born Hamm no harm that he bears a passing resemblance to everyone’s favourite leading man, George Clooney.

It might be the light salt-and- peppering of his hair, the wide and easy grin or the suggestion of stubble around his square jaw but, whatever it is, the benefits of the comparison are not lost on Hamm.

He is, after all, 10 years younger than Clooney – that’s a very long time in Hollywood years.

Hamm said: “It’s certainly very nice to be compared to George. If there was anyone whose career I would love to emulate, it would be him.

“He’s made fantastic films, he’s had a wonderful TV career, he’s been in big and small movies, he’s directed films and he seems to be a thoughtful, intelligent person who is not that concerned with the vagaries of celebrity. As for being a sex symbol, I don’t consider myself one – that’s for other people to decide.

“It’s a lovely compliment, if fairly inaccurate, but, sure, it’s nice.”

Though Draper’s marriage fell apart at the end of the last series and the new shows feature much of his new existence as a single man, Hamm’s personal life couldn’t be more different.

He’s been in a relationship with actress girlfriend Jennifer Westfeldt since 1997 and, though he claims they feel no particular motivation to marry, he insists they are in it for keeps.

Hamm said: “I feel very happy with my girlfriend, my dog, our house and our careers.

“It’s fun for me to be in a different world when I’m at work but, maybe unlike Don, I have a much easier time separating life from work.

“My girlfriend and I are making a film. That’s another exciting thing to do.”

And his movie career is beginning to take off, with two films coming out in September – an action thriller called The Town, in which he stars with Ben Affleck, and a more arty offering called Howl, about a famous obscenity trial involving US Beat poets.

Hamm said: “I’d never have got the opportunity to do these things if I had not done Mad Men.

“I’ve always been a fairly optimistic person. My default thought process has always been, ‘I’ll get a job eventually’.

“But the numbers are very much stacked against you. The best you can do is keep moving forward and hope someone takes a chance on you and your talent.”