Mad Men star Jon Hamm has recently completed a course of treatment for alcoholism, a spokesperson for the actor has confirmed.
Hamm entered rehab to tackle his addiction with the support of his longtime partner, fellow actor and film-maker Jennifer Westfeldt, their publicist Annett Wolf said in a statement released on Tuesday.
The 44-year-old actor has played Don Draper, a troubled advertising executive with a dark past and drinking problems of his own, for seven seasons of Matthew Weiner’s Madison Avenue-set drama.
The role brought repeated Emmy award nominations and profile to an actor whose career had comprised mostly of smaller guest and supporting roles in film and television.
In a 2013 Observer interview, Hamm spoke of the weight of expectation on well-known actors. “Our names tend to come with something attached – an audience and an expectation, and I guess a price tag. The challenge is to choose the right things to do,” he said.
In the same interview, he stressed the differences between his own life and that of his character: “I’m not that methody. I am very cognisant that I am playing a character. Don Draper is a pretty dismal, despicable guy, so why I would want to take him home with me I don’t know.”
The disclosure of Hamm’s stint in rehab, first reported by US gossip website TMZ on Monday, comes ahead of Mad Men’s final season premiere at the start of April.
Hamm and Westfeldt, who met when she cast him in Kissing Jessica Stein, have asked for “privacy and sensitivity”. No further details were provided in Tuesday’s statement.
