ONTD

On Don Draper:
"There is no Don Draper. Don Draper was blown up in a ditch in Korea. That whole 'Be Don Draper' thing, I feel it's… sad. This is a fundamentally f**ked up human being."



On the sweetness of his success:
"It's certainly sweet. There's a lot of talk about, 'Oooh, you're so sexy!' If people put that mantle on you, fine, but you take it with a wink and a pinch of salt. At 41 I'm like, give me a break, man, I'm no Ryan Gosling. And that's fine. I don’t aspire to be that. That’s not my jam."



On using his own struggles with grief and depression to play Don Draper:
"If the audience is picking up on some kind of 'lost' vibe I'm giving out, then great. I hope that lends a deeper resonance. It's not anything I’m doing consciously. All we can do as actors is bring our own personal experience to the role. My mother died when I was 10, so I did have far more experience of being raised outside my family than I had from my own home, probably. But who cares?"



On seeing a shrink aged 20 after the death of his father:
"Talking to anybody helps. Talking to your friends helps. But your friends are your friends. They'll tell you what you want to hear. The shrink doesn’t sugarcoat it: 'Hey, you’re f**ked up. Do this, this and this. Don't do this anymore.' It's a wonderful third-person perspective that you get from an analyst. It's invaluable, I think."



On first reading the script for the Man Men pilot:
"I remember picking it up. Mad Men: shitty title. AMC: network no-one's ever heard of. Two strikes. Then I read it. I said to her [his girlfriend at the time], ‘This is the best pilot I’ve ever read in my life.’ She’s going, 'What?' That’s never the response to a pilot. Sometimes, at best, you're like, 'Hey! It's not terrible!' And I just thought, 'I have to be in this show.' And thus began the long, winding road to getting cast."



On fame impinging on his life:
"Obviously you can't go tear it up and act like an idiot, but at a certain age you should probably stop doing that anyway. I'm not that interesting to follow around. I don't fall down and you can’t see up my skirt."







source { Check out the full Jon Hamm interview in the May issue of Esquire - on sale Monday 2 April }