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.

Robert Bianco of USA Today was complimentary of Hamm noting that his interpretation of Draper was a "starmaking performance". His one-episode contract grew to 19 and led him to quit waiting tables. Hamm attended the private John Burroughs School in Ladue Missouri where he was a member of the football baseball and swim teams and dated future actress Sarah Clarke.

His performance earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series in 2008. Hamm gained recognition for playing advertising executive Don Draper in the AMC drama series Mad Men which premiered in July 2007. That same year Hamm appeared in a remake of the science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still.