Armie Hammer has compared being kicked out of Hollywood to being crucified.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Call Me By Your Name star, whose film was canceled in 2021 after accusations of sexual assault and cannibalism surfaced, opens up about how the fallout completely derailed her career and how she overcame the fall.
Hammer was accused of sexual assault in 2021 by his ex-girlfriend, who also claimed that Hammer raped her “violently” and for “more than four hours.”
Hammer, who was married to his wife Elizabeth Chambers at the time of the 2017 assault allegations, appears to have been banned from Hollywood after a series of text messages allegedly detailing sexual fantasies that included references to rape, physical and emotional violence, and cannibalism.
They were leaked online by his ex-girlfriend, Efrozina Angelova.
In April 2023, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office confirmed that the investigation was ongoing, but the DA ultimately said there was not enough evidence to charge him with wrongdoing.
In an interview with THR, Hammer recalled the moment his father, Michael, encouraged him to take a firm stand against the accusations.
“He was furious,” Hammer said. “‘I’m going to call this person, I’m going to do this, we need to make sure they know this.’ He really wanted to go on the offensive.”
“I said, ‘Look, hey, I’m already on the cross. The nails are in my hands. No matter what I do, I’m not going to get off this cross,'” Hammer, who had fled to the Cayman Islands at the time, recalled telling his father. “And the more you struggle, the longer you’ll be here.”
Hammer said you have to accept your reality to deal with it.
“What you resist persists. What you embrace changes,” he said. “There was nothing I could say that would solve anything for me.”
“There was a time when I was fascinated by what people were saying,” he continued. “Then I hit a tipping point and thought, ‘There’s no nutritional value to this for me. This is hardly even a real world. I realized I just need to focus on myself and my kids and staying healthy and growing as a person. You can make that your goal.’
During the interview, Mr. Hammer revealed full responsibility for the scandal.
“These problems are of my own making. This didn’t happen to me in a fluke,” Hammer told the outlet. “I didn’t do what people are saying. But I brought very dangerous and dangerous people into my life, and I blamed people in my life, and here we are.”
“I remember my emotional state and my mental state before all this happened. Healthy people don’t act the way I was acting. I wish I had had the opportunity to do it in a gentler way. But at the end of the day, you get what you get.”
His ex-wife, Chambers, filed for divorce in 2020, months before allegations of abuse, rape and cannibalism against Hammer became public. Their divorce was finalized in 2023.
