Two years ago, the American actor Armie Hammer (Santa Monica, United States, 36 years old) was accused of sexual abuse and cannibalism, a fact that caused his successful film career to collapse. Since then, the former Hollywood star, who has starred in blockbuster movies like La red social (2010), The Lone Ranger (2013) o Call Me by Your Name (2017), he wanted to disappear from the map, and even moved to the Cayman Islands, where he grew up, with the aim of going completely unnoticed. He had never ruled on the accusations that led him to enter rehabilitation to treat his addictions after accusations of cannibalism and harassment. Until this February 3: last Friday he gave his first interview to talk about everything that happened.
Hammer has thus broken his silence in what has been his first interview since the accusations, and he has done so in Air Mail, a weekly digital magazine. In the interview, the actor admits to having been emotionally abusive towards his ex-partners, but denies having committed any rape. At all times he denies the accusation of rape of a woman, with whom he had an intermittent relationship for four years and with whom he knows Effie. And he claims it was what he describes as a “consensual non-consensual” scene in which she allegedly planned all the details. “I’m here to own up to my mistakes, to own up to the fact that I was a selfish bastard, using people to make myself feel better.”
The actor was involved in a scandal in February 2021 after the publication of several of his conversations that revealed his sexual fetishism with cannibalistic practices. Several women accused him of sexual abuse and even rape. Complaints that were investigated by the Los Angeles police (USA). Among the complainants were the influencers Courtney Vucekovich or Paige Lorenze. He now says that the “power dynamics” with his ex-partners were unbalanced because he was a star, and acknowledges that he emotionally abused them, but reduces his behavior to what he describes as being “stupid” and “ selfish”.
It was then that Hammer, he explains, decided to get away from the spotlight, the red carpets and his work as an actor, and when he had suicidal thoughts: “I went into the ocean and swam as far as I could, hoping to drown, get hit by a boat, or eaten by a shark.” “Then I realized that my children were on the shore, and that I could not do that to them,” adds the actor, father of two children with the television presenter Elizabeth Chambers and from whom he separated in 2020 before the accusations came out. to the light. They were together for 10 years, they got married in 2010.
Indeed, after the accusations, Hammer decided to withdraw from the filming of an explosive wedding, a comedy that he was going to star in alongside Jennifer Lopez and that was released with little media presence in June 2022 with Josh Duhamel as the leading actor. In addition, he also left the role of him in the series that is about how the movie was created. The Godfather (1972), in which he played producer Al Ruddy.
In the interview, Hammer also confesses to having suffered sexual abuse when he was 13 years old by of a protestant priest and considers that this episode was the one that originated his interest in the practices of submission and sexual domination known as BDSM (acronym for Bondage, Domination-Discipline, Submission-Sadism, Masochism). “That made sexuality enter my life in a way that was completely out of my control.” “In that situation I was helpless. Sexuality was introduced to me in a terrifying way that I was not in control of. So my interest developed that way: sexually, I want to be in control of the situation,” adds the actor.
The controversy surrounding Hammer returned to focus at the end of 2022 with the docuseries The Hammer saga: scandal and perversion (HBO Max), three gruesome episodes that review the scandal that was uncovered when several Instagram users made public the correspondence they had with him and aired their cannibal fantasies and in which two of his ex-partners, Courtney Vucekovich and Julia Morrison, were given a voice. confirming the allegations of abuse.
Currently, the actor has been working as a time-share salesman in the Cayman Islands, and says he has undergone treatment and is grateful for his recovery, for which he was hospitalized for nine months — he left the rehab center in December 2021. —. But Hammer also launches a critique of cancel culture, which he says doesn’t give rehab a chance. In the interview, he also confesses the help he received from fellow actor Robert Downey Junior and how he supported him through his fall from grace and set him on the road to recovery.
He also reflects on the possibilities of returning to Hollywood, something he doesn’t think will happen anytime soon: “No one will hire me. Nobody will insure me. I can’t get a bond for a project, nothing.” “And no one is going to touch me because if they hire me, then they are the people who support the abusers,” she says. Now, he says, his life is focused on helping a partner recover from his addictions.
