Background

Ethnicity: Hamm is of 37.5% German, 37.5% English, and 25% Irish descent.

Jon Hamm was born on March 10, 1967, in St. Louis, Missouri, the United States, Deborah (Garner) and Daniel Hamm. His father had two daughters from his first marriage. Hamm also has two siblings. An older sister named Jennifer Hinze and a younger sister, Julie Schulte.

Hamm had a difficult upbringing. His family owned a successful trucking company for generations in St. Louis, but the business declined as Jon grew up. When Hamm was just two, his parents got divorced. He lived with his mother in St. Louis County in Creve Coeur, Missouri. He saw his father on the weekends. Living with his mother, he "tried a lot of different things - violin, soccer, creative writing," Hamm told in an interview "My mother celebrated learning." Subsequently, Hamm went to live with his father in Clayton, Missouri.

At the age of 10, Hamm lost his mother to colon cancer, which had spread throughout her body. After her death, Hamm moved to his grandmother's house with his father. He recalled: "We were three generations living under one roof, which is difficult in the best of circumstances." Some of his friends' mothers also felt moved to look after him. His father passed away when he was 20.

Education

Hamm found sanctuary from his difficult home life at the progressive John Burroughs Preparatory School. During his time there, he was a member of the football, swim as well as baseball teams.

An athlete and performer, Hamm was a linebacker on his school's football team and had the leading role in a production of Godspell. He decided to go to the University of Texas, turning down offers to play football at several Ivy League colleges. His time at the University of Texas turned out to be brief, however, due to personal hardships. First, his grandmother died. Shortly after, his father became ill. After struggling with his sickness, Dan Hamm died during Jon's sophomore year of college. Hamm told in an interview: "I suddenly had no parents. It was like I had no mooring." Choosing to finish school at the University of Missouri, Hamm looked for work to help support himself and got a job at a local day-care center.

Hamm also became very active in the university's theater program. One of his professors, Jim Miller, said that Hamm "was the most intellectual actor I have had in 30 years of teaching," according to an article in the university's alumni magazine, Mizzou. He spent two summers performing in the school's repertory company, starring as Cliff in Cabaret and Leon Colgosz in a production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins.

In 1993, Hamm earned a bachelor's degree in English from the university.

Career

After Graduation Hamm anded a job as a teacher at his old school, John Burroughs. For two years, Hamm taught drama there, teaching students such as Ellie Kemper, who later became a film and television actress. He also made friends with up-and-coming actor Paul Rudd while living in St. Louis. Rudd described Hamm as "one of those unfair guys who are good looking, really funny and good at everything."

In 1995, Hamm decided to move to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. Packing up everything he owned, he drove to his aunt and uncle's house in West Los Angeles. He stayed with them until he got his own apartment, which he shared with a series of roommates. For years, Hamm struggled to find work as an actor. He made his television and film debuts in 2000, with bit parts in the comedy series The Hughleys and the adventure flick Space Cowboys. Landing a recurring role, Hamm appeared on the television drama Providence from 2000 to 2001.

Also around this time, Hamm got a part on the Los Angeles stage in Lipschtick written by Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen. The story follows two women pursuing a relationship. It was turned into the 2002 independent film Kissing Jessica Stein, in which Hamm also appeared. Off-screen he developed a relationship with Westfeldt, and the two eventually moved in together. That same year, Hamm had a blink-and-you'll-miss-it part in Mel Gibson's military drama We Were Soldiers.

On the police drama The Division, Hamm played Inspector Nate Russo opposite Bonnie Bedelia and Nancy McKeon. He stayed on the show for two years. After its cancellation, Hamm made a series of guest appearances on such shows as Charmed, CSI: Miami, and Numb3rs. He also landed recurring roles on the military drama The Unit and the dramatic comedy What About Brian.

In 2007, Hamm took on his most famous character to date, playing philandering ad executive Don Draper in the American Movie Classics show Mad Men. He auditioned seven times to get the role. Set in the 1960s, Mad Men explores the lives of the employees of a top New York City ad agency. The cast also features January Jones as his wife Betty and John Slattery as his boss Roger Sterling. Elisabeth Moss plays Peggy, a secretary-turned-copywriter on the show. The Don-Peggy relationship has been challenging for Hamm, especially when he has to be hard on Peggy. He said that Moss "looks about nine years old. It's like kicking a puppy," according to Daily Variety. But for Hamm, the character has been an opportunity to stretch as an actor.

Over its run, Mad Men has garnered stellar reviews and won several awards, including the 2011 Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series. Hamm personally won a Golden Globe Award in 2008 and 2016, and received numerous Emmy Award nominations for his work as Don Draper, winning in 2015.

Stepping away from the finely tailored vintage suits, Hamm appeared in the 2008 science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still with Keanu Reeves. He also had roles in the crime drama Stolen (2009) and the Allen Ginsberg biopic Howl (2010). Showing his comedic talents, Hamm also had a recurring role on the hit sitcom 30 Rock. He plays the handsome, but not very bright, neighbor of TV writer Liz Lemon (played by Tina Fey).

Wanting to have greater control over his career, Hamm established a production company, Points West Pictures, with girlfriend Westfeldt in 2009. The pair co-starred in her 2012 film Friends With Kids, which also featured Adam Scott, Maya Rudolph, and Kristen Wiig. Hamm had also appeared in the 2011 hit comedy Bridesmaids with Wiig. In this film, Hamm played Wiig's cruel love interest.

In 2014, Hamm starred in the heartwarming sports movie The Million Dollar Arm. The film is based on a true story about a sports agent who recruits several Indian cricket players and tries to transform them into major league baseball pitchers. The following year, he had a chance to work with his former drama student Kemper in her Netflix comedy series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, for which he earned another Emmy nod in 2015.

Hamm featured in the comedy Keeping Up with the Joneses, alongside Zach Galifianakis and Gal Gadot; the film was filmed during the spring of 2015 and was released during October 2016 after being delayed seven months. He appeared in the science fiction film Marjorie Prime,[80] which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, Edgar Wright's comedy crime film Baby Driver, which premiered at the 2017 South by Southwest Festival, and the drama Aardvark, which premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival. In 2018, Hamm appeared in the drama Nostalgia and the political thriller Beirut. Hamm appeared in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Goodbye, Krabby Patty?".

In 2017 Hamm joined the BBC and Amazon's television adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens as the Archangel Gabriel.

Achievements

• Hamm gained wide recognition when Mad Men began in July 2007. His performance earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Series - Drama in 2008 and again in 2016, and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2015. He also directed two episodes of the show.
  
  Hamm has received 16 Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his performances in or production of Mad Men, 30 Rock (2006-2013), and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015-2019).
  
  Internationally considered as a sex symbol, Hamm was named one of Salon's Sexiest Man Living in 2007, and one of People magazine's Sexiest Men Alive in 2008. During November 2008, Entertainment Weekly named him one of their Entertainers of the Year. He again was named one of the magazine's Entertainers of the Year during 2010. Hamm also won GQ's "International Man" award during September 2010.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Marjorie Prime

    (In the near future, a time of artificial intelligence: 86...)

    2017
  • The Congress

    (More than two decades after catapulting to stardom with T...)

    2013
  • Friends With Kids

    (Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph and Jon Hamm star alongside Je...)

    2012
  • Kissing Jessica Stein

    (Jessica Stein is a single, straight, successful businessw...)

    2001
  • Keeping Up with the Joneses

    (A suburban couple discovers their neighbors are covert sp...)

    2016
  • Aardvark

    (Troubled man Josh Norman (Zachary Quinto) has hallucinati...)

    2017
  • Sucker Punch

    ("Sucker Punch" is an epic action fantasy that takes us in...)

    2011
  • Minions

    (Minions Stuart, Kevin, and Bob are recruited by Scarlet O...)

    2015
  • Space Cowboys

    (Forty years after their original space mission was scrapp...)

    2000
  • Nostalgia

    (A mosaic of stories about love and loss, Nostalgia explor...)

    2018
  • Absolutely Fabulous the Movie

    (In their big-screen debut, Edina and Patsy (Jennifer Saun...)

    2016
  • Baby Driver

    (Coerced into working for a crime boss, a young getaway dr...)

    2017
  • Tag

    (Based on a real-life story, this comedy follows a group o...)

    2018
  • Bad Times at the El Royale

    (Several strangers meet up at a rundown Lake Tahoe hotel i...)

    2018
  • The Day the Earth Stood Still

    (In The Day the Earth Stood Still, a contemporary reinvent...)

    2008
  • Howl

    (James Franco stars as the young Allen Ginsberg - poet, co...)

    2010
  • Ira & Abby

    (A hastily married couple quickly devolve into a life of a...)

    2006
  • Shrek Forever After

    (The further adventures of the giant green ogre, Shrek, li...)

    2010
  • The Town

    (A bank robber falls in love with a former robbery hostage...)

    2010
  • Beirut

    (Caught in the crossfires of civil war, CIA operatives mus...)

    2018
  • Million Dollar Arm

    (JB Bernstein's career rests with finding a cricket pitche...)

    2014
  • We Were Soldiers

    (The year is 1965 and America is at war with North Vietnam...)

    2002
  • The Ten

    (Ten stories, each inspired by one of the ten commandments.)

    2007

• TV series

  • Mad Men

    (Set in 1960 New York City, in an unexpected new world - t...)

    2007
  • All or Nothing: A Season with the Arizona Cardinals

    (Arizona Cardinals: For the first time in history, Amazon ...)

    2016
  • A Young Doctor's Notebook and Other Stories

    (Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe star in this wry comedy-dra...)

    2012
  • What About Brian

    (What About Brian follows a close-knit group of friends in...)

    2006
  • Good Omens

    (Aziraphale and Crowley, of Heaven and Hell respectively, ...)

    2019

Religion

Both Hamm's parents died when he was young, and talking about that would be a perfect opportunity to talk about “the will of God” or muse that he will see them in the next life. But he said: Losing both parents at a young age gave me a sense that you can’t really control life-so you’d better live it while it’s here. I stopped believing in a storybook existence a long time ago. All you can do is push in a direction and see what comes of it."

Politics

Hamm is a Democrat. He supported Barack Obama during the 2012 Presidential elections. Also, Hamm attended the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina in 2012.

Views

Hamm is an advocate of animal rescue. Hamm starred in a video on the Shelter Me website to encourage dog adoption.

Quotations: "L.A. represents opportunity. And, as has been proven over and over in the current media landscape, it doesn't take much for them to put you on TV. If that's all you want, you can be on The Bachelor or The Real Housewives or whatever show just wants oversized personalities, ridiculous behavior, and zero dignity."

"It's nice not to have to worry about how you're going to pay your bills. And it's a problem I've had for far longer than I haven't had it. Not worrying about the bills is still very new for me."

"Whenever people want to talk about how hard it is to be an actor, I want to go, 'Um, it's hard to be a baby heart-surgeon'. Being an actor is actually pretty easy if you can memorize lines."

Personality

Hamm struggled with severe chronic depression in his early twenties after the death of his father.

Shortly before the debut of the final Mad Men season in April 2015, Hamm revealed that he had undergone rehabilitation for alcohol abuse. He talked about this recent crisis with Australia's TV Week magazine. “Life throws a lot at you sometimes and you have to deal with it as much as you can," Hamm said. He also said that he was very appreciative of all of the support he has received from family and friends since the news of his stay in rehab broke.

Although his character Don Draper is famous for being a very heavy smoker, Hamm quit smoking when he was twenty-four and uses herbal cigarettes on ''Mad Men''.

After repeatedly failing to obtain promising roles, he set his 30th birthday as a deadline to succeed in Hollywood. "You either suck that up and find another agent, or you go home and say you gave it a shot, but that's the end of that. The last thing I wanted to be out here was one of those actors who's 45 years old, with a tenuous grasp of their own reality, and not really working much. So I gave myself five years. I said, if I can't get it going by the time I'm 30, I'm in the wrong place. And as soon as I said that, it's like I started working right away," he said in an interview.

Jon Hamm owns four eagles. They sit on separate perches in his backyard. Four species of eagle: golden, tawny, Spanish Imperial, and short-toed snake.

Physical Characteristics: Hamm reported developing vitiligo during the filming of Mad Men.

Interests

• comics, birds

• Politicians

  Barack Obama

• Writers

  Moonglow by Michael Chabon, The Circle by Dave Eggers, Command and Control by Eric Schlosser

• Artists

  Jeff Bridges,Sam Elliott, Greg Kinnear

• Sport & Clubs

  golf, tennis, hockey, St. Louis Blues, baseball, St. Louis Cardinals, football, cricket

• Music & Bands

  Sinéad O’Connor, Portishead, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Minnie Riperton, Jay-Z

Connections

Hamm was in a relationship with actress and screenwriter Jennifer Westfeldt from 1997 to 2015.

Father:

Daniel Hamm

Mother:

Deborah (Garner) Hamm

colleague:

Jessica Chastain

ex-girlfriend:

Jennifer Westfeldt

In an interview discussing his relationship with Westfeldt, Hamm said: "We may not have a piece of paper that says we're husband and wife, but after 10 years, Jennifer is more than just a girlfriend. What we have is much deeper and we both know that. To me, people get married when they're ready to have kids, which I'm not ruling out."

Sister:

Jennifer Hinze

Sister:

Julie Schulte

colleague:

Winona Ryder

colleague:

Keanu Reeves

colleague:

Antonio Banderas

colleague:

James Franco

colleague:

Ansel Elgort

colleague:

Rosamund Pike

colleague:

Chris Hemsworth

colleague:

Olivia Wilde

colleague:

Elisabeth Moss

Friend:

Paul Rudd

References

• Jon Hamm Biography