Jon Hamm

Jon: Acting is sort of an extension of childhood. You get to play all of these roles and have so much fun. Playing an athlete would be so cool. Or where you get to shoot guns, ride horses. I wouldn't turn down any of that.

Jon: I've gotten away with a lot in my life. The older you get the more you realise you're not getting away with it, it's taking its toll somewhere. So you try not to put yourself in those situations. Part of the mysterious process called growing up. Some people do that better than others.

Jon: (in an April 2008 interview) I was raised by a single mother and I've been in a 10-year relationship with my girlfriend. My whole life I've been surrounded by women.

Jon: Being in an ensemble cast is the best. You're all in the same boat. You're all together.

Jon: There are a lot of stories about your parents that sometimes you just don't get when you're a little kid - like philandering or maybe not being the best person. And you think, yeesh! We all have impressions of people in our lives, political leaders or father figures, where you think, 'They always had our best interests in mind.' Very often that's not the case - it's the opposite, they had their best interests in mind.

Jon: (in an August 2007 interview) I think kids now, their detectors are much more fine-tuned than the people in my generation or even older, because we're just, I think, sort of accustomed - if it's in print, you kind of believe it.

Jon: (on his relationship with girlfriend Jennifer Westfeldt; in a 2007 interview) I have a lady, she's a great lady. I love her a lot, she loves me. We're on the same page. Whenever that day happens when we're not on the same page we'll move forward with it. We're interested in having our lives be our lives right now and not a third person's vis-à-vis marriage and whatever that means.

Jon: (on him attending John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Missouri) I have to say it was the single most profound, resonating decision ever made in my life. It wasn't made by me, but it's what every mother should want for her child.

Jon: I've always been a fan of advertising, I've always been a fan of television, I've loved commercials, I've loved all the jingles, I loved all the stuff.

Jon: Most people who are successful, like George Clooney and Brad Pitt, had to eat shit at a lot of auditions and still not get the parts. So you have to develop resilience.

Jon: (on being the lead actor in "Mad Men") It's definitely nerve-racking to be the center of attention. I'm not the kind of an actor that just craves attention 24-7 - but it's part of the deal. You're the leader on the set.

Jon: (comparing himself to his "Mad Men" character Don) I suppose there's a lot of him in me. The idea of where's my next idea coming from? Am I a fraud? Are my best days behind me? All that anxiety is very much there in my own sensibility. But again, as a person in the world, you work through that or you wither.

Jon: I don't necessarily want kids. A lot of our friends are having children and I don't know if it's for me. I haven't come down hardcore on either side of the argument. I think when people come from a stable family having children becomes a celebration and I'm not sure it would be that way for me.

Jon: (on being recognized in public as the actor who plays hair-product-wearing Don Draper in "Mad Men") Brylcreem tends to make the difference. If I have it in, it happens. If not, I can usually slip in and out.