Armie Hammer thinks audiences will be seeing more of him three years after sexual assault allegations and revelations of apparently cannibalistic fantasies derailed his acting career.
The “Social Network” and “Call Me by Your Name” actor opened up about his return to Hollywood on a Wednesday episode of the “Your Mom’s House” podcast with Christina Pazsitzy and Tom Segura. He shared that after leaving Hollywood, selling timeshares in the Cayman Islands and quietly returning to acting with director Travis Mills’ “Frontier Crucible,” he’s getting a position to be choosier with his projects.
“I’m turning jobs down. My dance card’s getting pretty full,” Hammer said. “That first job that I turned down after four years of this s–t, I mean, it was the best feeling I’ve ever had.”
The Western “Frontier Crucible” marked Hammer’s return to the big screen last year opposite William H. Macy.
“It’s slow, but generally now the conversation when my name comes up with people in the industry is, ‘Man, that guy got f–ked.’ And that feels really good. It’s really encouraging,” Hammer added.
Elsewhere on the podcast, the “Death on the Nile” actor shared more about how the revelations and allegations around his sex life impacted him personally and professionally. Following sexually charged text messages with various women surfaced in early 2021, Hammer was accused of sexual assault by several women outside of his marriage, with one accusing him of rape while others detailed cannibalistic fantasies the star shared over text. Following an LAPD investigation, no charges were filed.
Hammer maintained the relationships were entirely consensual but did admit to cheating on his then-wife Elizabeth Chambers. Despite that, his acting work dried up, and he was dropped by WME, leading him to the temporary Cayman Islands gig while in Hollywood exile.
“I think somewhere deep down, subconsciously I wanted to get caught,” he admitted on the podcast. “I so did not relate to the image of me that was out there in the public of: ‘Look at them [Hammer and his wife Chambers]. They’re like the Ralph Lauren family. They’ve got the perfect life and the perfect house and the perfect kids.’”
Hammer and Chambers have two children. Hammer added that during the pandemic, he felt like the internet was craving a “salacious story” such as his to cling to during a dark time.
“The world seemed like it was falling apart, and people were just deeply unhappy with their own lives,” he said. “And then this salacious story comes around where this actor wants to murder and eat people. And all of a sudden, everyone’s like, ‘Oh, this is so much more fun to focus on than the fact that I can’t leave my living room.’”
However, the star did admit that he struggled with a sex addiction and using women for validation.
“People were my bags of dope with skin on it. Like, having that, having people want to have sex with me, having sex with people, doing all that stuff, like, it gave me a sense of power. It gave me a sense of validation,” he said.
Hammer has completed filming on “Frontier Crucible” and he said he has two more feature films coming up – one set to shoot this month in Croatia and the other in the Philippines this spring. All of his recent acting work has been negotiated through his attorney because he still does not having agency representation. He also mentioned there may be a potential TV show in the works that had been signed off by “the head of a studio.”
For now, Hammer has also launched a podcast to give audiences a glimpse into who he is where he has full creative control.
“I’m doing it on my terms and I’m doing it authentically as myself,” he said of his show “The Armie Hammertime Podcast.” “One of the scary things about having the podcast is being vulnerable in a public way, especially having gone through what I went through where all this s–t was weaponized against me, is really f–king scary. But I’m leaning into it because I know that the things generally that make me feel afraid are the things that I got to go towards in order to grow.”
