Jon Hamm, the 43-year-old US star who sends many hearts a-flutter as Mad Men’s Don Draper, believes he is “old and irrelevant.


Speaking to RadioTimes.com ahead of a screening for the Black Mirror: White Christmas special, he said: “Other than being old and irrelevant in the current media landscape I don’t think about technology”.

Does Jon Hamm really think he’s past it? We had to know more…

“Ask anyone under the age of twenty if they have heard of me and they will go ‘no, that guy looks like my dad’.

“It doesn’t compute to the generation that most of Hollywood cares about, If your last name’s not Hemsworth or you are not in One Direction or you don’t wear a cape and tights for a living, you literally have a hard time making an impression.”

Asked whether this annoyed him, he responded: “What do you think?”

On the question of whether he had ever been offered a role in tights, Hamm said he had “been in contention for quite a few of those” and said he was glad he made the “right decision” to say no to them, although he didn’t name the movies in question.

“The deals that they make you do are so draconian. And, of course, you are signed on for not only the movie that you are signed on for… but at least two more that you haven’t read and you have no idea what they are going to be and all the crossover ones you are going to have to do.

“For me to sign on now to do a superhero movie would mean I would be working until I am fifty as that particular superhero.

“It’s a lot of work at one thing which is not necessarily the reason I got into the business which is to do many things. If you want to spend all day pressing the same key that… seems an odd choice.”

Hamm also said that he found social media – a subject explored in the dark Black Mirror special – “terrifying”.

“It’s partly why I don’t have any presence on social networking. Being an actor in the public eye and a quasi-celebrity is weird enough without giving everything up to everyone else.

“Social media is part of the social fabric. It’s woven in. To not participate in it is to not participate in society, to become a weird sort of hermit. People look at you like you belong in a cabin in the woods and you are not part of the society.

“The 18-to-34-year-old [consumer] is the only demographic that the world, the world of entertainment…consider relevant.”

Hamm also cited the recent Sony hacks as an example of the terrifying changes technology has brought about.

“This could not have happened ten years ago, literally, and it will keep happening,” he said.

“I have had meetings at Sony [and if] someone wanted to look hard enough… there’s probably s****y things studio executives have said about [me]. I am just not famous enough for it to go on Gawker.”


Black Mirrors airs on Channel 4 at 9pm on Tuesday 16 December