Jon Hamm

He decided that his 30th birthday would be his deadline to succeed in Hollywood, and has said: "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."

Jonathan Daniel Hamm (born March 10, 1971) is an American actor best known for his role as Don Draper in the period drama series Mad Men (2007–2015), for which he won numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards.

Hamm was born on March 10, 1971, in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Deborah ( Garner) Hamm, a secretary, and Daniel Hamm, who managed a family trucking company.

He is of German, English and Irish descent; his surname came from German immigrants.

He was raised Catholic.

His parents divorced when he was two years old, and he lived in the St. Louis suburb of Creve Coeur with his mother until her death from colon cancer.

He then lived with his father and grandmother in nearby Normandy.

Hamm was 10 years old when his mother died.

His father then died ten years later, effectively making Hamm an orphan at 20.

His first acting role was as Winnie-the-Pooh in first grade.

At 16, he was cast as Judas in the play Godspell and enjoyed the experience, though he did not take acting seriously.

He attended John Burroughs School, a private school in Ladue, where he was a member of the football, baseball and swim teams.

During this time he dated Sarah Clarke, who became an actress.

After graduation in 1989, Hamm enrolled at the University of Texas. He later transferred to the University of Missouri.

He answered an advertisement from a theater company seeking players for a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and was cast in the production.

Other roles followed, such as Leon Czolgosz in Assassins.

While a member of Sigma Nu fraternity at the University of Texas, Hamm was arrested for allegedly participating in a fraternity hazing incident in November 1990.

According to testimony by the alleged victim, Hamm lit the pledge's jeans on fire, shoved his face in the dirt, and struck him with a paddle.

The pledge required medical care and ultimately withdrew from school.

The incident resulted in the fraternity being shut down.

Hamm made a plea deal and completed probation under the terms of a deferred adjudication, allowing him to avoid being convicted of a crime.

After graduating in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, Hamm returned to his high school to teach eighth-grade acting.

One of his students was Ellie Kemper, who became an actress.

Years later, Hamm appeared in Kemper's Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

The charges were dismissed in August 1995 following the completion of his probation.

Hamm, who didn't wish to pursue a "normal career," moved to Los Angeles permanently in 1995.

He moved into a house with four other aspiring actors and began working as a waiter while attending auditions.

He acted in theater, including as Flavius in a production of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens with the Sacred Fools Theater Company.

Looking older than his age, he found it difficult to find work as an actor, despite representation by the William Morris Agency.

In 1998, after he failed to get any acting work for three years, William Morris dropped him as a client.

He continued working as a waiter and, briefly, worked as a set designer for a softcore pornography movie.

In 2000, Hamm landed the role of romantic firefighter Burt Ridley on NBC's drama series Providence.

His one-episode contract grew to 19 and allowed him to quit waiting tables.

He made his feature movie debut with one line in Clint Eastwood's adventure film Space Cowboys (2000).

More substantial roles followed in the independent comedy Kissing Jessica Stein (2001) and the war film We Were Soldiers (2002), during the filming of which he turned 30.

Hamm is also known for his leading film roles in Stolen (2010), Million Dollar Arm (2014), Keeping Up with the Joneses (2016), Beirut (2018), and Confess, Fletch (2022), as well as his supporting roles in The Town (2010), Sucker Punch (2011), Bridesmaids (2011), Baby Driver (2017), Tag (2018), Bad Times at the El Royale (2018), The Report (2019), Richard Jewell (2019), No Sudden Move (2021), and Top Gun: Maverick (2022).

He also voiced roles in the animated films Shrek Forever After (2010) and Minions (2015).

He has appeared in the Sky Arts series A Young Doctor's Notebook, the Channel 4 dystopian anthology series Black Mirror, the Amazon Prime fantasy series Good Omens, the FX superhero series Legion (2018), and the FX crime anthology series Fargo.

He was Emmy-nominated for his roles in 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

He has also acted in Parks and Recreation, Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Morning Show.