\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tArmie Hammer<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotographed by Mark Griffin Champion<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tNine years ago, Hammer seemed to exist at the precise intersection of genetics, legacy and timing that occasionally produces a superstar. Great-grandson of the Russian-Jewish oil tycoon Armand Hammer, whose name still graces buildings across Los Angeles, he had grown up between Beverly Hills and the Cayman Islands, emerged from his teens with Polo-ad looks and old-school ease in front of cameras.<\/p>\n \n\tHis breakthrough came playing both Winklevoss twins in David Fincher\u2019s The Social Network<\/em>. What followed \u2014 The Lone Ranger<\/em>, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.<\/em> and finally Call Me by Your Name<\/em> \u2014 was a career that kept almost arriving.<\/p>\n \n\tHe was funny about it then. \u201cI\u2019ve heard the \u2018This is your moment\u2019 speech so many times,\u201d I remember him saying with a sigh during our first encounter. \u201cThe way I look at it is, I\u2019m building a collage of my work.\u201d And enjoying himself as much as he could in the process.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI used to call myself a consumer,\u201d he tells me now. \u201cDrinks, women, validation, experiences \u2014 I just wanted to consume. All of it. More, more, more.\u201d He pauses. \u201cI didn\u2019t actually know how to give myself what I needed internally, so I relied on external sources. It\u2019s like a black hole \u2014 no matter how much you throw in, it\u2019s gone. You\u2019re never going to fill up a black hole.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThere was also, underneath all that consumption, something more corrosive. \u201cI had a bit of imposter syndrome,\u201d he says. \u201cI was like, \u2018I don\u2019t really belong here, but it seems like I\u2019m here \u2014 so maybe I\u2019ll have a martini, that\u2019ll make me feel better about the fact that I\u2019m here.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n \n\tFour years later, the collage he was building went up in flames. What happened is public record. Several women came forward with accounts of psychological and sexual abuse. Explicit messages attributed to Hammer had circulated online describing graphic sexual and cannibalistic fantasies. A woman with whom he carried on a four-year affair \u2014 all while married to ex-wife Elizabeth Chambers \u2014 accused him of rape. He denied the allegations. An LAPD investigation was opened and later closed without charges. For many, none of that settled anything. The messages alone were specific enough \u2014 and disturbing enough \u2014 that those who read them have not been able to unread them. The career, already faltering, ended entirely.<\/p>\n \n\tHis WME agents dropped him; his publicist was gone. He is now represented by a single entertainment attorney whose primary job is contracts and who told Hammer, when asked to make some calls on his behalf, \u201cThat\u2019s not really what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWhat followed was genuine chaos. Friends who texted their support privately were targeted by internet obsessives and doxed, he says. Hammer changed his phone number repeatedly until he gave up entirely and bought a burner flip phone at a gas station, carrying it for a year and a half.<\/p>\n \n\tFor a stretch, he was couch surfing, staying in friends\u2019 places while they traveled. He ended up in the Venice apartment \u2014 a rent-controlled space so small, it had a Murphy bed. The Hammer family fortune, such as it remains, was not a safety net. After his father died, he received nothing. \u201cIt\u2019s just one of those things that\u2019s so complicated, you have to be a tax attorney to fully understand it,\u201d he says of the estate. \u201cBut the end result was not I\u2019m set for the rest of my life, or even for the next couple of years. It hasn\u2019t been that.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tI ask, carefully, about reports that his ex-wife played some role in what unfolded. He doesn\u2019t take the bait, but he doesn\u2019t entirely deflect it, either. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t help my situation to make it worse for somebody else to try to save my own ass,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd all I\u2019m doing is making something worse for someone who was for a long time the sole breadwinner of the family. If I disrupt that, it\u2019s my kids who suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHammer could write a handbook to surviving an epic cancellation: He got off social media. He read Pema Ch\u00f6dr\u00f6n. He developed a philosophical framework for surviving the experience of having the entire internet decide it hates you. \u201cThere was a period where I was obsessively reading what people were saying,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd then it hit critical mass, and I thought: There is no nutritional value in this for me. This is almost not even the real world.\u201d He cites a Tyler, the Creator tweet about cyberbullying, circa 2012, and pulls it up on his phone. (\u201cHahahahahahahaha How The Fuck Is Cyber Bullying Real,\u201d the tweet begins.)<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI realized I could just focus on myself and my kids and staying healthy and growing as a person. You can make that your purpose,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat saved him, he says, was his father.<\/p>\n \n\tThe family, including his wife \u2014 who had already filed for divorce \u2014 had retreated to the Cayman Islands when COVID hit. His father, Michael, held Caymanian citizenship, which gave them access to an island that for the first year of the pandemic had essentially zero cases. Schools stayed open. Restaurants stayed open. While Los Angeles descended into Zoom school and anxiety, his kids were outside, living something close to a normal childhood.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt really was idyllic for the kids,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \n\tHis relationship with his father had been complicated for years \u2014 two strong personalities, with accumulated grievances on both sides. When the scandal broke, Michael Hammer wanted to go to war with his son\u2019s accusers. \u201cHe was furious,\u201d Armie says. \u201d \u2018I\u2019m going to call this person, I\u2019m going to do this, we have to make sure they know this.\u2019 He really wanted to go on the offensive.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI said: \u2018Look, dude, I\u2019m already on the cross,\u2019 \u201d he continues. \u201d \u2018The nails are in my hands. I\u2019m not getting off this cross no matter what we do. And the more I struggle, the longer I\u2019m going to be up here.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n \n\tHe had come to believe, through whatever combination of self-help reading and desperation and time, that acceptance was the only viable strategy. \u201cThat which you resist persists. That which you accept transforms,\u201d he says, reciting mantra. \u201cThere was nothing I could say that was going to fix anything for me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThen his father got sick, and the old grievances stopped mattering.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cHe was still able to be a lifeline,\u201d Hammer says. Michael owned a small apartment building on the island and gave his son a unit to stay in. But as Michael\u2019s illness progressed, it was his son who became the lifeline: \u201cI would bathe him and cook food for him and feed him and change his diapers and do all that stuff.\u201d It transformed their relationship, just in time. \u201cWe got to have all those conversations,\u201d he says. \u201cWe got to have an amends with each other. We got to really move through it. And then I got to be there holding his hand when he died. Which is like a gift.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tStill raw from his father\u2019s death, he found himself one afternoon talking to a man he describes only as \u201can old Jamaican guy.\u201d Hammer had been complaining that his industry friends were sending sympathetic texts but not publicly defending him. The Jamaican man looked at him.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhat kind of friend are you?\u201d he said. He explained: Your house is burning down right now, in real time. You want your friends to run into a burning house? What happens to them if they do?<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThey get burned,\u201d Hammer said.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cDo you want your friends to get burned?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSo if you were really a good friend, what would you want your friends to do?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHammer thought about it. \u201cI would want them to stay as far away from the fire as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe man patted his leg. \u201cNow you\u2019re thinking like a real friend.\u201d Then he stood up and walked away.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think that was a spiritual moment,\u201d Hammer says. \u201cJoseph Campbell would have called it a mentor moment in my hero\u2019s journey, whatever the fuck that is.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tArmie Hammer<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotographed by Mark Griffin Champion<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\t***<\/p>\n \n\tHe came back to Los Angeles in 2024, and about a year and a half later, an email arrived. It was from Uwe Boll \u2014 the German filmmaker whose decades of aggressively low-budget, critically dismissed genre films had transformed him into something of a cult figure, the kind of director whose name functions as its own punchline. Boll wanted Hammer for a movie. It was the first offer he had received in five years.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m pretty sure I cried,\u201d Hammer says. \u201cIt was just this moment where I was like: I\u2019m going to get to do the thing that I love more than anything \u2014 other than my children.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe pauses.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI would have done a fucking cat food commercial. I just wanted to work again.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut underneath was something more unsettling: He wasn\u2019t sure he could remember how to act. \u201cI was scared shitless until the moment Uwe said action for the first time,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd then I was like \u2014 \u2018Wait. I do know how to do this.\u2019 There\u2019s a reason I had the success I had.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe film, shot in Croatia, is called Citizen Vigilante<\/em>. Boll\u2019s methods are famously economical: The script was around 50 pages when Hammer received it. \u201cI was like, \u2018Where\u2019s the rest?\u2019 \u201d He adopts a thick German accent as Boll: \u201d \u2018No, no, no! Ve just go and shoot and have fun. Ve vant you to be great!\u2019 \u201d Hammer laughs at the memory. \u201cI was like, \u2018Well, OK?\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n \n\tHe has since done three more low-budget films: Frontier Crucible<\/em>, a Western. Night Driver<\/em>, a small L.A. thriller about a Mafia errand boy whose night goes sideways. And a film in Bulgaria, playing a real person whose identity he won\u2019t disclose because the project hasn\u2019t been announced. He grew a mustache for it that, paired with a trucker hat in a recent paparazzi photo, generated significant online enthusiasm. \u201cWas I Daddy?\u201d he jokingly inquires after I bring it up.<\/p>\n \n\tThe professional apparatus is gone entirely. No agents, no manager, no personal publicist. If someone wants to hire Armie Hammer, they go on IMDb Pro and find his attorney. \u201cLately, they always say on the first day of set, \u2018We can\u2019t believe we actually got you to do this.\u2019 \u201d He pauses. \u201cAnd I\u2019m like: \u2018My schedule was pretty open.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n \n\tHis life now is structured around the children \u2014 a daughter, 11, and a son, 9 \u2014 with an almost monastic discipline. He is up at 6:30 every morning. He makes his bed. He cleans his apartment. He makes coffee and takes it outside and meditates and does what he calls his \u201cgratitude practice.\u201d Then he walks to his ex-wife\u2019s house, wakes the kids, makes their breakfast, gets them to school. He picks them up most afternoons. He drops them off in the evening.<\/p>\n \n\tHe lives in a small, rented house in West Hollywood \u2014 a minor but welcome upgrade from the Venice shoebox. Returning to Los Angeles after the Caymans was harder than he expected. \u201cI was back in a city that felt like it used to be my city,\u201d he says, \u201cbut it had moved on without me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThroughout the evening, as he cuts into his medium rare steak frites, I keep waiting for the score-settling. It never comes. He won\u2019t go after his ex-wife when given the opening. He won\u2019t name the industry friends who went quiet \u2014 although he will note that his gay friends never turned on him. \u201cThey were like, \u2018Bitch, you think you\u2019re special? If the Grindr chats got released and someone hacked into those, no one would have a job.\u2019 \u201d He laughs. \u201cAnd, by the way,\u201d he adds, referencing his own leaked texts, \u201cif you\u2019re sitting up in your room late at night high as shit just going, \u2018This is fucking hilarious. I\u2019m being funny now\u2019 \u2014 you take that shit out of context, then you\u2019re done.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut he does not claim total innocence, either. \u201cI made these problems for myself,\u201d he says. \u201cThis didn\u2019t happen to me by a fluke accident. I didn\u2019t do what people are saying I did. But I brought very dangerous and unsafe people into my life, and I pissed off people in my life \u2014 and here we are.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe describes the chaos of the scandal \u2014 the doxing, the phone numbers, the siege of it \u2014 without identifying a villain. But he acknowledges that his public image is a hurdle he has far from cleared, that he is not yet entirely un-canceled. \u201cIt\u2019s like Sisyphus pushing the boulder,\u201d he says, \u201cexcept my boulder is covered in Vaseline.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe went to see a movie recently \u2014 the hit horror breakout Obsession<\/em> \u2014 and afterward found himself in a conversation about wishes. A friend asked what he would wish for if he could wish for anything. He thought about it seriously. A billion dollars, he decided. Put a chunk of it in an ETF, set the kids up, have some comfort and stability. His friend was surprised: Your wish wouldn\u2019t be going back and undoing everything that\u2019s happened?<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cHonestly, no,\u201d he tells me toward the end of our reunion dinner, after the apple tarte tatin \u00e0 la mode arrives (his suggestion). \u201cI remember the emotional state and the mental state I was in before all that happened. Healthy people don\u2019t act the way I was acting.\u201d He glances down at the table. \u201cI would have loved if I could have had an opportunity to do it in a little bit more of a gentle way,\u201d he says of his struggles since we last sat down together. \u201cBut at the end of the day \u2014 you get what you get.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tArmie Hammer<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" "\\"\\"")
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