And it remains working. HAMM In a similar vein, I had a head of this television network tell my representatives, actually, that Jon Hamm will never be a television star. Does a comment like that sink you or motivate you? But it was one of those things. Steve Martin talks about it in his book, but auditioning is the worst. HAMM But do you still do that? There was a crossover for me. I hated auditioning, and then one day I realized that they want you to get the part.
Did I not? Nicholas, your Idea of You co-star Anne Hathaway did say recently that you could have chemistry with a lamp, which could qualify as strange or funny feedback. The lamp was flickering. Honestly, that was an amazing audition experience where I had a very conducive room, and it makes all the difference. You come out of it with like this performance high.
But when I went into audition for young Tarzan, there were no lines, and I was told that I had to pretend that I had an orange that someone was trying to steal from me and I had to guard it. That is a moment that keeps me awake at night. I think about it a lot. And then you see these actresses again. Is that awkward? I definitely had that with that experience. I went into my agency, I said this, then the next thing that hit my doormat was a film called Nightingale.
It was just me, in a house, having killed my mother. Eighty pages with no one else. And, yeah, it was a risk, but it was definitely one that paid off.
Can the rest of you do that? Every time you go into a new thing, the potential to fail is hovering around β the potential to not actually do it as well as you hope you can, is always there. It never goes away. Clive, early in your career, you were on a very popular television show, and at its height, you decided to pivot and take a role in a movie that, I believe, surprised people. And very young, I landed this big TV show called Chancer , which got a lot of heat, and then I started to get offered a lot of stuff like that.
