Mad Men's Jon Hamm says the worst job he ever had as a struggling actor in Los Angeles was working as a set dresser on soft-core porn films.

Jon Hamm used to work on porn films. The 43-year-old actor struggled to get his big break in Hollywood when he first started out in the 90s and took every job he could find, including the ''soul-crushing'' role of a set dresser for soft-core porn movies.

He confessed in the new issue of Vanity Fair magazine: ''I was actually at that time working as a set dresser for Cinemax soft-core-porn movies. It was soul-crushing.''

Years later, after slaving away as a waiter and being dropped by his first agent, Jon landed the role of slick advertising boss Don Draper in hit 60s set show 'Mad Men' and he has never looked back.

 He explained: ''This is the best job I've ever had and maybe ever will have in my life - it's so fun to play all of this. It can be relentlessly dark. It can be terribly sexually inappropriate, is a way to say it. But who else gets a chance to do any of that stuff? There's so much there.''

The handsome star's passion for acting harks back to his childhood, when his father would take him along to parties and dump him in front of the TV all night. Jon recalled: ''Eleven-thirty would roll around and the big huge 22-inch TV would be tuned to 'Saturday Night Live'. I would sit two feet in front of the TV and stare and watch the whole thing.''