As he steps up to the plate for "Million Dollar arm", Jon Hamm, a late bloomer, sports fan, classic Hollywood leading man ponders life after "Don Draper", his character at "Mad Men".
In fact, Jon bears none of the arrogance and boorishness of Don Draper, the silver-tongued, womanizing advertising executive he's portrayed on AMC's Mad Men since 2007, and he quit smoking years ago, but occasionally as he said, he enjoys an evening out like the character who made him famous.
And exactly like Don Draper, Jon shakes it off and wakes up for work. It's nothing like a coffee can't remedy, after all, so when the waiter comes by to ask if he'd like anything, he orders a cup to go, along with the one he brought himself.
At age 43, Jon is at the tail end of a crazy seven-year streak, Mad Men, during which he went from handsome-but-unknown actor to dashing Hollywood superstar over the course of the TV series.
In the process, on did something very special, by forging a stardom that's enviable and not all annoying, joining the likes of George Clooney and Harrison Ford. in the tiny club of A-list actors who achieved their recognition not as teen heartthrobs as promising youngsters, but as early-middle-aged men. With classic leading-man looks and an easy approachable charm, they are as admired by men as they are desired by women. It is a good place to be.
Jon is a personable guy who's immediately easy to talk to, and he seems relaxed, comfortable with his place in the weird world of inhabits. For the first time in his recent professional life, he's in the position of having time to consider his uncertain future, and I am wondering the same thing everyone else is: Once "Don Draper" crushes out his last cigarette, what's Jon Hamm going to do? I think that's the question we're all asking ourselves, then "Hamm says, with a laugh. "What is next? I honestly have no idea."
During breaks from "Mad Men", he has been shooting movies and appearing on sitcoms. But those were all supporting jobs, wedged into scheduled holes, and this month, Jon will attempt to carry his first big movie, "Million Dollar Arm", which happens to be about one of his favorite things in the world: BASEBALL.
"Million Dollar Arm" is the true story of one sports agent's quest to find new talent in India, a massive country with a rich history of cricket - the stick-and-ball ancestor to baseball.
Jon Hamm is very proud of his Alma Mater, the John Burroughs School, a progressive private school outside Saint Louis, was such a seminal part of his upbringing that he returned there after graduating from college in Missouri to teach drama. Among the things Burroughs taught him, he says, was that success should be encouraged.
He is not sure where or why it happened, but he's observed "this weird backlash" against being ambitious and upwardly mobile in America, and the notion irritates him.
He lost his mother at the age of 10 and then moved in with his grandmother and father, a smart, genial man who wasn't the most involved parent. He's said in the past that his portrayal of the morally flexible "Don Draper" is, in part, inspired y his dad, so it makes sense that he looked at the Burroughs School as steadying influence. "My greatest takeaway from my school was that "as good as you could be wasn't good enough. Be betetr. Do sports and science and arts, all of it. Do all of it."
Hamm's best sport was football. He played linebacker, and though he was "very good", as he said, his commitment went only so far. "I couldn't be a Division I football player, but I would have to completely change my body type" - as in, put on 50 pounds of muscle. Part of him was tempted to try it. The other part, his more sensible side, knew too well the inherent dangers of playing thee game. "I knew how much it hurt, and I didn't want that life," he says. " I didn't want to be drooling in a cup in my 40's."
After a year of teaching drama, in 1995 Hamm himself felt the pull of acting and headed west in a beat-up Toyota Corolla, beginning a peripatetic decade of odd jobs and crappy apartments during which success proved elusive. he got parts but also waited tables.
To be a good person, he thinks, requires only the right perspective. "Maybe it;s because I've lost people at very young age" - following the loss of his mother, his father died during Hamm's sophomore year of college - "but I've never had a problem understanding life. It is short!
In fact, Jon bears none of the arrogance and boorishness of Don Draper, the silver-tongued, womanizing advertising executive he's portrayed on AMC's Mad Men since 2007, and he quit smoking years ago, but occasionally as he said, he enjoys an evening out like the character who made him famous.
And exactly like Don Draper, Jon shakes it off and wakes up for work. It's nothing like a coffee can't remedy, after all, so when the waiter comes by to ask if he'd like anything, he orders a cup to go, along with the one he brought himself.
At age 43, Jon is at the tail end of a crazy seven-year streak, Mad Men, during which he went from handsome-but-unknown actor to dashing Hollywood superstar over the course of the TV series.
In the process, on did something very special, by forging a stardom that's enviable and not all annoying, joining the likes of George Clooney and Harrison Ford. in the tiny club of A-list actors who achieved their recognition not as teen heartthrobs as promising youngsters, but as early-middle-aged men. With classic leading-man looks and an easy approachable charm, they are as admired by men as they are desired by women. It is a good place to be.
During breaks from "Mad Men", he has been shooting movies and appearing on sitcoms. But those were all supporting jobs, wedged into scheduled holes, and this month, Jon will attempt to carry his first big movie, "Million Dollar Arm", which happens to be about one of his favorite things in the world: BASEBALL.
Jon Hamm is very proud of his Alma Mater, the John Burroughs School, a progressive private school outside Saint Louis, was such a seminal part of his upbringing that he returned there after graduating from college in Missouri to teach drama. Among the things Burroughs taught him, he says, was that success should be encouraged.
He is not sure where or why it happened, but he's observed "this weird backlash" against being ambitious and upwardly mobile in America, and the notion irritates him.
He lost his mother at the age of 10 and then moved in with his grandmother and father, a smart, genial man who wasn't the most involved parent. He's said in the past that his portrayal of the morally flexible "Don Draper" is, in part, inspired y his dad, so it makes sense that he looked at the Burroughs School as steadying influence. "My greatest takeaway from my school was that "as good as you could be wasn't good enough. Be betetr. Do sports and science and arts, all of it. Do all of it."
Hamm's best sport was football. He played linebacker, and though he was "very good", as he said, his commitment went only so far. "I couldn't be a Division I football player, but I would have to completely change my body type" - as in, put on 50 pounds of muscle. Part of him was tempted to try it. The other part, his more sensible side, knew too well the inherent dangers of playing thee game. "I knew how much it hurt, and I didn't want that life," he says. " I didn't want to be drooling in a cup in my 40's."
After a year of teaching drama, in 1995 Hamm himself felt the pull of acting and headed west in a beat-up Toyota Corolla, beginning a peripatetic decade of odd jobs and crappy apartments during which success proved elusive. he got parts but also waited tables.
To be a good person, he thinks, requires only the right perspective. "Maybe it;s because I've lost people at very young age" - following the loss of his mother, his father died during Hamm's sophomore year of college - "but I've never had a problem understanding life. It is short!
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