JON HAMM is best known for revolutionizing how society envisions masculinity, in all of its raw sensuality, insatiable competitive hunger, arrogance, and corrosive loneliness, in his deft portrayal of Don Draper, but he is equally deft at comedy. Happy to laugh at himself, a necessity when you look like (and were) a star high school football player, Hamm is clearly a team player which makes him enjoyable to work with, as evidenced in how often TV creators like Tina Fey and Robert Carlock find excuses to cast him. Of course, Hamm is ultimately cast because he delivers. In Mad Men Bridesmaids, 30 Rock, and SNL, he seems to only hit home runs.

Still, Hamm, like any actor, needed directors and show creators to go to bat for him when he hadn’t yet had the opportunities to prove himself. Hamm says he struggled for years in his early twenties. (I thought that was the definition of being in your twenties).

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