The hammer came down on Armie Hammer, and now he works a normal job. Hey, everybody's gotta eat!
Here's the truth about the former actor's current life – and how he fell from grace.
Armie Hammer's family is
wealthy, the kind of wealth that allows for private schools, prestigious connections,
and the kind of everyday privileges that most of us can only dream about.
But he doesn't come from a line of famous entertainers. The Hammer
family has long been entangled in politics and oil, and in some questionable ways.
Hammer's great-great-grandfather, Julius Hammer, was a co-founder of the American Communist Labor
Party, and a physician who briefly landed in prison after performing an abortion for the wife
of a Russian diplomat, leading to her death. While in prison, he drew the admiration of Vladimir
Lenin, and his son Armand Hammer continued to have a cozy relationship with the Soviet Union.
In a New York Times piece on Armand Hammer from 1981, the then-head of Occidental Petroleum
was "credited" with maintaining solid business relationships with traditionally hostile countries
like the USSR, and Libya under dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi. He was gifted a luxury apartment in
Moscow by Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev , and in 1972, he even got into legal hot water for
illegal campaign donations to disgraced president Richard Nixon — despite being a Democrat.
"Well, I'm not a crook."
As a youth, Armie Hammer
was enrolled in a small private Christian school, according to a 2011 profile by New York Magazine.
Like many private school kids, he exhibited a bit of a rebellious streak.
Unlike most private school kids, however, those acts of rebellion included some light arson,
complete with an ill-advised signature. Hammer recalled to New York Magazine:
"I poured lighter fluid outside the school and set it on fire."
He went on to explain that he was caught because he had the bright idea to sign his
name with said lighter fluid. Hammer also added that he was asked to not return to the school.
By his junior year in high school, he had permanently dropped out in order to pursue
his acting career. A few small television roles and one film later, he landed his first feature
lead — ironically, as the iconic TV evangelist Billy Graham in 2008's Billy: The Early Years.
Armie Hammer finally got noticed with a breakout role in 2010's Best Picture
Oscar nominee The Social Network, in which he played twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
"We could do that ourselves. I'm 6'5, 220 and there's two of me."
His performance drew him more acclaim and attention than ever before, and it looked like
the stars might be aligning for the guy. Then, in 2011, it was announced that Hammer had landed the
title role in Disney's mega-budget adaptation of The Lone Ranger. It was Hammer time, baby!
Or, not. The Lone Ranger was released in 2013 to brutal reviews, widespread indifference,
and a not-insignificant amount of ridicule lobbed at Hammer's co-star and noted white
man Johnny Depp. In the film, Depp played Native American sidekick Tonto in a costume
and makeup that could politely be described as "baffling." The film became one of the
most infamous bombs in cinematic history. Variety reported in 2013 that the film was
expected to lose a whopping $190 million after its marketing costs were figured in.
"Why am I covered in dirt?"
"I buried you."
Hammer and Depp, speaking with Yahoo! News, took the slightly un-diplomatic route of blaming
critics for the film's failure. It might have been enough to sink any young actor's
career — but the roles kept coming for Hammer, in pictures like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in 2015,
Nocturnal Animals in 2016, and Call Me By Your Name in 2017, another Best Picture nominee.
Even as Armie Hammer embellished his reputation as
a talented actor with his turns in Call Me By Your Name and Sorry to Bother You, he also embellished
his reputation as a man seemingly made of red flags. In 2019, he grossed out the entire internet
with a since-deleted Instagram post featuring his then-2-year-old son Ford sucking on his toes.
Then, also in 2019, the Los Angeles Times reported that Hammer and other famous
types were rightly getting swamped with criticism over their support of MDL Beast,
a music festival taking place in the human rights-challenged nation of Saudi Arabia.
In yet another since-deleted Instagram post, Hammer gushed, tone-deafly:
"What I just witnessed was truly special. I saw Saudi men and women ecstatic about
an event that they never thought they would ever see in their lifetimes."
He went on to compare the event to Woodstock, and to comment that MDL Beast would kick off a giant,
revolutionary cultural shift in the country. This, of course, did not happen.
In 2020, a pair of women, Courtney Vucekovich and Paige Lorenze, came forward with details of the
intense and bizarre relationships they had had with Armie Hammer. Vucekovich told Vanity Fair:
"Day one, he makes you feel bad for him; it's when he makes himself look like a victim.
You're the only girl in the whole world. And then he starts the manipulation and the darker stuff."
"I was closing my eyes until it ended."
She explained that she ended up in treatment for trauma after Hammer talked her into a, quote,
"bondage scenario" that she was in no way comfortable with. Lorenze asserted that
her relationship with Hammer got even darker, telling Vanity Fair:
"He started making rules for me of things I could and couldn't do [...] I just started
to feel really unsafe and really sick to my stomach about things."
She went on to call Hammer "kind of scary," and had even once made a comment about wanting to
eat her ribs. Lorenze said she came forward to bring more attention to the issue of consent.
She also said that her relationship with Hammer had brought into focus
just how thorny of an issue consent can be. Lorenze also expressed her hope to
start a charitable organization calling attention to the issue.
Unfortunately, it didn't take long for the scandal to worsen. Later in 2021, an
anonymous woman going by the name of "Effie" came forward to allege that Armie Hammer had violently
assaulted her in a hotel room in 2017. The woman said during a press conference with her attorney,
"[Hammer] repeatedly slapped my head against
a wall, [along with] other acts of violence against me to which I did not consent."
Beyond the obvious horror of the allegations, they threw into question a pretty darned high-profile
project: Disney's adaptation of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile, which was already completed,
and which featured Hammer among its ensemble cast. As also reported by Variety near the end of the
year, it was speculated that Disney had several options to choose from in order to mitigate the
potential damage caused by Hammer's flameout, including re-shooting his parts and/or sending the
movie straight to streaming. In the end, though, the movie was released as planned — promoted by a
trailer noticeably light on Hammer, who did not take part in any of the film's press junkets.
Disney may have been a little tentative in distancing itself from Armie Hammer,
but as far as Death on the Nile goes, it was at least relatively easy to downplay
his presence among a gargantuan cast of superstars. As it happened,
Hammer had a couple more prominent roles lined up at the time the scandal broke,
and those projects were quick to drop him like a hot, morally-questionable potato.
In January 2021, it was reported that Hammer had been dumped from Shotgun Wedding,
a rom-com in which he was to star opposite Jennifer Lopez. Hammer spun this by saying that he
couldn't take time off to be away from his children. Near-immediately thereafter, though,
Variety reported that The Offer, the Paramount+ series about the making of The Godfather,
had also bestowed upon Hammer his walking papers. Just a week after that, as was
pretty much inevitable, the news broke that both Hammer's agency and his publicist had dropped him,
which probably didn't have much to do with his parental availability.
With all of his scandals, one would think that Armie Hammer would do his best to lay low for a
while, perhaps by removing himself from the public eye altogether, or refraining from posting things
on social media that could further call his character into question. This, however, was not
the case. In the middle of it all, Hammer took off to the Cayman Islands, and tossed up a doozy of a
since-deleted Instagram post: A video of a young woman, scantily clad and in a ... compromising
position, which he captioned, "Miss Cayman." Now, the Caymans have a beauty pageant by a
very similar name, and the organization was quick to respond with a terse statement:
"The Committee is very disturbed by the video and would like to confirm
that the woman is not the reigning Miss Cayman
Islands and has no affiliation to the Miss Cayman Islands Universe pageant."
Hammer, too, felt the need to publicly clarify, releasing a
statement to the Cayman Compass newspaper hand-waving the Instagram post as a, quote,
"foolish attempt at humor." According to its website, the Royal Cayman Islands Police
Service didn't find the situation to be too funny. They briefly checked into Hammer over the post,
and warned him against such conduct in the future before closing the investigation.
Finally, in 2022 came what should probably be, but is almost certainly not, the final chapter
in this sad saga. TMZ published a report in July of that year, along with photos,
stating that Armie Hammer had once again been spotted in the Cayman Islands. This time,
however, he appeared to have landed himself a new job: Selling timeshares and acting
as a "personal concierge" at Morritt's, a Grand Cayman resort. Hammer's camp didn't
respond to the multiple requests for a comment — at least, not at that time.
Just a few days later, Variety reported that it had spoken with an unnamed source who informed
them that, yes, Hammer was indeed employed by the resort, as he was, quote, "totally broke." The
very next day, People published a report citing an "insider," who offered up the following:
"[Hammer] is currently selling timeshares because he needs the
money ... His dad won't help him anymore and he's been cut off, so he got to work."
Hammer's lawyer had finally chimed in by this point, telling People that while he
didn't "know anything about" the actor's current gig, he did find it to be unfair
that Hammer was being "shamed" by the media for having a, quote, "normal job."
In the wake of all of this awfulness, the internet began regurgitating one of its longtime beefs with
Armie Hammer: That, as a good-looking, straight, white man of privilege, he had been afforded far
more chances to become a highly bankable movie star than he deserved. The opinion
was crystallized in a 2017 Buzzfeed editorial entitled, "Ten Long Years of Trying to Make Armie
Hammer Happen," which noted that despite a string of high-profile flops like The Lone Ranger, The
Man from U.N.C.L.E., and The Birth of a Nation, Hollywood just kept tapping him on the shoulder —
even as his public image kept steadily eroding.
A 2017 profile in The Journal similarly noted that unlike, say, Jon Hamm,
Hammer never had to wait tables while waiting to break into the big time. The issue became
glaring enough that Hammer himself addressed it in a 2019 interview with the Independent,
wherein he said a lot of the right words. He said, for example, that the fact that his
feet were up on the table at the time could be construed as a failure to check his privilege:
"I mean like, I'm just being comfortable and relaxed,
but [...] there are things all the time that I catch myself doing and I think,
'Wait a second, is this white privilege? Yeah, I think it is. Look at what I'm doing. Yeesh.'"
If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the
National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also
find more information, resources, and support at their website.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of
sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network
website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).