Happy Birthday: Jon Hamm

Jon Hamm

Born: March 10, 1971 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA

(On landing his role in Mad Men (2007)) 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 (2007) and I loved it. Then, I realized that a guy who wrote for The Sopranos (1999), 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 (2006) 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.

(On the success of Mad Men (2007)) Sean Penn and Meryl Streep are having a conversation, and you’re standing next to them, and they stop and turn to you and say, “Oh God, we love your show”. Yeah, that wasn’t happening with my work in What About Brian (2006).

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