She’s a precocious 28-year-old English gamine, pale and long-limbed, the daughter of legendary theater director Sir Peter Hall....... He’s a burly, corn-fed Midwesterner, ruggedly handsome in a Cary Grant sort of way, who arrived in Hollywood at age 24 and labored in the trenches for a decade before earning fame and wealth as a small-screen leading man on Mad Men. Now 39 and in his fourth season as Don Draper, he’s scoring roles in everything from the upcoming Allen Ginsberg indie biopic Howl and next year’s megabudget action flick Sucker Punch to NBC’s 30 Rock. The paths of Rebecca Hall and Jon Hamm converge in the September film The Town, a morally complex cops-and-robbers drama set in director Ben Affleck’s hometown of Boston. Hall
plays a bank manager who is traumatized by seeing a colleague brutally beaten by a masked thief. When she meets a handsome man, played by Affleck, who offers her comfort, protection and romance, she has no way of knowing that he was the violent offender’s accomplice. Hamm is less charmed: He plays the man in blue, hot on Affleck’s trail. The two actors recently sat down with W at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles.
W: Did you both have to audition for The Town?
Jon Hamm: I was on a list of people that the studio was considering. They go down the list, basically.
Rebecca Hall: I don’t think I was on a list. I auditioned. My agent flew me to New York because I couldn’t afford to pay the airfare, and then if I got it, I’d pay her back. I met Ben in some hotel room and we chatted for about two hours. I didn’t hear anything for about three months, and then I got the call.
Hamm: Do you know who else they asked to do it?
Hall: No. Do you?
Hamm: Maybe.
Hall: Spill the beans. Jessica Simpson?
Hamm: I was going to say Lindsay Lohan, but that’s not really funny anymore. It’s sort of sad
W: What was Ben like off-set?
Hall: He’s kind of what you expect: He’s incredibly smart; he’s good fun. It’s got to be odd being that famous, especially in Boston, where he can’t walk a block without having to put his hood up. He is Mr. Boston.
Hamm: I mean, the guy is a patron saint of that city. [When you’re] walking around with him, everybody of every walk of life is like, “Hey, Ben!”
Hall: And to be in every frame of a movie as an actor and a director—
Hamm: That’s a huge accomplishment.
Hall: And a bit schizophrenic as well because you are having to wear two different hats and be quite clear about which one you’re wearing at any given time. It’s very rare that actors can direct themselves.
Hamm: Without just turning into a raving lunatic or an a–hole.
W: Rebecca, would you label Jon a man’s man or a ladies’ man?
Hall: I don’t know. He’s proper manly, like Gregory Peck, old-school. He hangs around with the boys and does sports. But can he talk to women about emotions and shoes?
Hamm: Absolutely. Can and do. I was raised by a single mother. I think the definition of a man’s man has shifted in recent times to this sort of fratty bro, different from the older version, which was aloof and distant—Gary Cooper or Cary Grant or James Bond. Now it’s a little vulgar, kind of lowbrow, adolescent. I’m not that guy. Part of being an adult is treating women like women.
Hall: The grand pendulum has swung backwards a little bit. Women are allowing themselves to be objectified as “empowerment.” I suppose to some degree you have to go through that phase of, like, “Look, I can make myself a sexualized object.” Still, I just hope that it’s okay for women to read and be bright and talk about interesting things and be sexy.
Hamm: To be able to read and talk about complicated things is sexy. It’s not just having a pair of bolt-on tits.
W: Rebecca, in stories earlier this year about the breakup of Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet—
Hall: Oh, you’re going to do that, are you?
W: —your name was mentioned in a way that implicated you in the breakup of their marriage. Is there any accuracy to that perception?
Hall: No.
Hamm: The reality is that I broke them up.
Hall: Jon Hamm was sleeping with Sam Mendes.
W: Wow. Does a sex tape exist?
Hamm: Does it? He directed it. It’s beautiful.
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