Jon Hamm has been giving more quotes in the last 24 hours than I can keep up with. He did two interviews in particular that are gaining quite a lot of attention.
The first, from the UK’s Guardian newspaper, as someone who doesn’t follow his work, was news to me; Hamm was an orphan aged 20. He lost his mother, suddenly, to stomach cancer when he was 10-years-old. Hamm went to live with his father, who had divorced his mother when Hamm was two. When Hamm was 20-years-old and studying English at the University of Texas, his father died too. Jesus f**king Christ. He says of the tragedy ‘Well, the theatre department always seems to be the sort of… way station for the orphans and all the people who don’t fit in anywhere else.’ Adding, ‘I was… unmoored by that. But I was very fortunate to have really good friends in my life whose parents sort of rallied.’ Of his recovery he said, ‘I struggled with chronic depression. I did do therapy and antidepressants for a brief period, which helped me.’ Moving on from those quotes, he also spoke to Details’ October 2010 issue. In there he made some interesting comments on reality stars and their delusions of grandeur…
- On the difference between actors and reality stars: “LA 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 just be on ‘The Bachelor’ or ‘The Real Housewives’ or whatever show just wants oversized personalities, ridiculous behavior and zero dignity… When you try to learn how to act, you approach it with respect. But if you just want to be famous… that’s not much different than porn. ‘I’m a movie star!’ Well, no, no you’re not. You’re a porn star, and that’s completely different.”
- On what made him successful in Hollywood: “I never minded standing up and looking like an idiot, which is tremendously helpful in this industry.”
- Why he feels lucky his success came later in life: “I don’t know how the ‘Twilight’ kids or Miley Cyrus handle it. You make one bad decision and people in Thailand Twitter about it.”
- On his new movie, ‘The Town’: “It’s almost like an old Hollywood movie. It’s got a love story, it’s got a crime element, but it’s very much for adults … There’s not a lot of candy for the Twitter-obsessed. It just deals with adult s**t — no werewolves, no vampires. Yet … they’re retooling it for 3D.”
Image credit to RIJ/ Fame Pictures. Story Pop Eater, Details, The Guardian.
