The Shady Side Of Armie Hammer

Armie Hammer got his start in Hollywood in the mid-2000s, playing bit parts on popular TV shows including Arrested Development and Desperate Housewives. Guest stints on Gossip Girl and Reaper followed, but the great-grandson of oil tycoon Armand Hammer failed to make it big. His career continued to be a slow burn, tainted by big budget flops, including The Lone Ranger, which has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 30%, but in then, finally, it seemed like Hammer finally set off on the path to success. His roles in 2017's Call Me by Your Name, opposite Timothée Chalamet, and in 2018's On the Basis of Sex, starring Feliticy Jones, were both received positively, but the accolades wouldn't last long.

Unfortunately, Hammer's positive streak (which has earned him a $16 million net worth) has repeatedly been overshadowed by personal drama. It seems that the actor has a penchant for speaking without thinking and his comments and alleged transgressions have repeatedly made headlines for all of the wrong reasons. This is the shady side of Armie Hammer.

Armie Hammer made headlines for all the wrong reasons in January 2021 when a series of graphic Instagram DMs he allegedly sent to various partners appeared online. According to the Daily Mail, the NSFW exchanges took place between 2016 and 2020 and were first published via an account called House of Effie, which has since gone private. "I need to drink your blood" and "I need your blood. I crave it," Hammer allegedly wrote in some of the many disturbing messages. As the outlet reports, @HouseOfEffie also shared a photo reportedly sent by Hammer, which allegedly shows his hand (complete with his very distinct ring finger tattoo) and proves the DMs are legit.

Amongst the messages, one screenshot appears to show Hammer telling a woman he was fantasizing about "holding your heart in my hand and controlling when it beats" before claiming, "I am 100% a cannibal [...] I've cut the heart out of a living animal before and eaten it while still warm." Meanwhile, another alleged victim came forward to claim that Hammer's "deeply rooted cannibal side of him is scary. He was obsessed with drinking my blood" and that "his manipulative behavior rewired my brain to make me see LOVE in it."

Hammer refused to respond to what he called "bulls*** claims," but decided to drop out of filming Shotgun Wedding opposite Jennifer Lopez. "[I]n light of the vicious and spurious online attacks against me, I cannot in good conscience now leave my children for 4 months to shoot a film," the actor said per The Hollywood Reporter.

In addition to stories of cannibalism, the alleged text messages sparked allegations of abuse. In one DM, Hammer allegedly boasted about an encounter in which he held a knife against his partner (it's unclear whether consensually) and "felt like a god." He allegedly wrote, "You crying and screaming, me standing over you [...] I've never felt such power or intensity." In another alleged exchange, the actor appeared to tell one of his partners (which he reportedly calls "kittens"), "I'd chase you down and pounce on you so fast if you tried to walk away [...] You'll need something strong to hold me back from you." Meanwhile, yet another screenshot reveals Hammer allegedly threatening to behead someone "If for some reason something goes wrong and my wife finds out."

While all of the accusers remain anonymous, as of this writing, they have since shared additional details with one tweeting that "'kink stuff' doesn't include murder fantasies, or dangerous knife games" and another alleging, "I never wanted to be in a relationship with him. But because of him, I could not be in a relationship with someone else." Meanwhile, writer Jessica Ciencin Henriquez (who sparked dating rumors with Hammer in September 2020) weighed in on Twitter, writing (via Just Jared), "If you are still questioning whether or not those Armie Hammer DMs are real (and they are) maybe you should start questioning why we live in a culture willing to give abusers the benefit of the doubt instead of victims. TW// sexual violence."

Armie Hammer didn't shy away from sharing his deepest bedroom fantasies in a 2013 interview with Playboy, nor did he have any qualms talking about his most intimate moments with his wife. "I used to like to be a dominant lover. I liked the grabbing of the neck and the hair and all that," he proclaimed (via Cosmopolitan) before telling the mag that getting "married to a feminist" changed all that. "You get married and your sexual appetites change. And I mean that for the better — it's not like I'm suffering in any way," he said, elaborating, "But you can't really pull your wife's hair. It gets to a point where you say, 'I respect you too much to do these things that I kind of want to do.'" Those comments quickly made headlines, forcing Hammer into some awkward backpedaling. "Let's just say hindsight is 20/20," he told E!, adding, "Don't drink during an interview."

The Rebecca star also never explained another whopping bedroom confession which he made to Elle that same month. "One chick tried to stab me when we were having sex," he proclaimed. Admitting that he "should so not be telling this story," he proceeded to tell it anyway, saying, "She was like, 'True love leaves scars. You don't have any.' And then she tried to stab me with a butcher knife. Of course I promptly broke up with her. Seven months later."

A secret Instagram account allegedly belonging to Armie Hammer leaked in January 2021 and, as Page Six reported, it was filled with questionable posts — everything from bondage memes to a screenshot of a court order mandating he take a drug test before visiting his children in the Cayman Islands (where they've been living with Hammer's ex-wife since the pandemic began). In the caption for the latter, the actor allegedly joked, "All negative, b******. My body is a finely tuned toxicant processing unit. To be fair I had THC and benzos in my p***. But who doesn't."

Using the handle @el_destructo_86, Hammer also reportedly lamented having to go to the Cayman Islands to see his kids. But there was one "silver lining," as he allegedly described "f****** Ms. Cayman again while I'm down there." According to Page Six, the proclamation was accompanied by a "racy shot," which prompted the Miss Cayman Islands organization to say it was "very disturbed" and clarify that "the woman is not the reigning Miss Cayman Islands and has no affiliation to the Miss Cayman Islands Universe pageant."

Hammer appeared to take ownership of the account when he told the Cayman Compass, "I would like to clarify that the person in my video, which was stolen from my private Instagram, is not Miss Cayman. I am genuinely sorry for any confusion my foolish attempt at humor may have caused."

Shortly after Lily James made headlines for getting handsy with the very much married Dominic West (her co-star in The Affair), the Daily Mail reported that the star may also have gotten close with another married actor: Armie Hammer. It was July 2020 when Hammer and wife Elizabeth Chambers announced they were separating after 10 years of marriage, and that October, rumors began circulating that James may have been at the center of the breakup.

As one source told the Daily Mail, Hammer and James reportedly got flirty on the 2019 set of their Netflix movie, Rebecca. According to the insider, the Downton Abbey star was "smitten" and "she was not subtle. And he was into it, no doubt about it. She was touching him constantly, giving him long smoldering looks," the source claimed, adding that while they were filming, Hammer "chose to have weeks away in the English countryside instead of returning to see his family who were also in the UK. This is all very typical of him."

What's more, Chambers reportedly found steamy texts on Hammer's phone, which were sent by a woman named Adeline. Although her identity was never confirmed, according to the Daily Mail, James was called Adeline on both movie call sheets and on her trailer during the Rebecca shoot. As the source concluded, "Elizabeth was devastated, heartbroken" by the discovery. While Hammer hasn't responded specifically to the rumors about James, she denied the affair through her reps. 

Armie Hammer was forced to deal with his split from Elizabeth Chambers (she filed for divorce in July 2020) in tandem with the coronavirus pandemic, and it seems the stress may have gotten the best of him. The actor's social media followers will have noticed some strange behavior since March 2020, including the time he showed up in Central Park to recite poetry (he chose Wendy Cope's "Valentine") or when he uploaded an Instagram video of himself shirtless, mustachioed, and chugging a can of beer before driving a golf ball — all set to The Temptations' "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone." His equally bizarre caption for the clip? "When the world is ending but you already have come to terms with the fact that this current time is ruled by chaos." 

He's also been sending out eyebrow-raising tweets, including one from December 2020 in which he proclaimed that "pets are gonna be pissed after covid" and mused, "I bet covid [through] the eyes of a dog is pretty awesome." That next month, he tweeted about a lesson he learned during physiotherapy, writing, "The human body is crazy. When you hurt your body, sometimes the best medicine is to just have another human being rub their human body against your human body." The sentiment didn't sit well with everyone. As one Twitter user pleaded, "Cancel Armie Hammer for this tweet alone please."

No stranger to making headline-worthy confessions during interviews, Armie Hammer caught Elle writer Jessica Pressler off-guard in 2013 when he opened up about an altercation with a homeless man, and did so in a seemingly unapologetic way. Hammer recalled how, while he was in Australia, "this homeless guy tried to stab me," so he "punched him and stole his knife." Pressler couldn't help but clarify, asking, "Wait. You punched a homeless guy and stole his knife?" To which Hammer simply responded, "He started it."

Explaining that the man had mistaken him for someone who owed him money, Hammer continued, "I was full of piss and hubris and was like 'F*** you!'" While recalling this part of the story, he pantomimed the punch, then continued, "I took his knife. Because he would have tried to stab somebody else! He was obviously crazy."

The Social Network star, then 26, went on to say that partner Elizabeth Chambers didn't condone his behavior, noting, "My wife says I have a frontal lobe issue" and explaining, "Your frontal lobe controls your danger response, like, 'Whoa, I shouldn't be doing this.' But she says it's okay, because your frontal lobe doesn't fully develop until around 30, so I have until then to get all this s*** out of my system and then I need to calm down."

It seems Armie Hammer enjoys the occasional edible, he just doesn't like talking about it. It was January 2012 when TMZ learned that Hammer had been arrested in Sierra Blanca, Texas in November 2011 after a drug-sniffing dog at a border checkpoint led officers to find three pot cookies and a pot brownie in his belongings. Hammer was arrested for marijuana possession and spent the day behind bars before paying the $1,000 bond to set himself free.

Not surprisingly, people wanted to know more, but Hammer remained tight-lipped. Speaking with TMZ, he brushed it off, saying, "There's a million sides to every story. I can't go into it. In 90 days, I can go into it, and I'll tell you all about it," he added, noting, "I think Texas is one of those places where you don't want to mess around, period, with anything." But after 90 days, he still avoided the topic. When Conan O'Brien asked about the bust in 2013, Hammer obliquely explained, "It was a misunderstanding of laws and interstate laws versus state laws and apparently federal laws supersede state laws." Okay. 

What he didn't mind doing was joking about his "handsome" mugshot. "What you didn't see is there was a makeup crew there, really, to do the whole thing," he told Access Hollywood. Jump to 2018 and he shared the photo on Instagram, writing, "It might not be Thursday, but this throwback seems worth it."

Armie Hammer ran quite the naughty business as a kid. Sitting down on The Late Late Show in 2017, the actor told host James Corden that he used to sell Playboys to his middle school classmates, as well as something extra. "You know those little, like, hotel lotions — the small, little individual size lotions?" Hammer asked, laughing, "It sounds so much worse when you say it out loud! But in my head it wasn't that bad. I was just an entrepreneur."

His entrepreneurial endeavor quickly went bust, however. "One of the first people we sold to was a guy named Dan [...] and then, after lunch, somehow I get called into the principal's office and they're like, 'We hear that you're selling Playboy magazines,'" Hammer recalled. He denied the whole thing to school authorities, but an immediate locker search ensued. Ever the forward-thinker, Hammer noted he had "a weird feeling something like this would happen," so he kept his stashes divided, stuffing the NSFW mags in plastic bags and hiding them "in the bushes in front of the McDonald's that was right by our school on Santa Monica Boulevard." He did, however, have a suspiciously large cache of lotion in his locker. His response when questioned about all those little bottles? "I was like, 'I get dry hands, thank you very much,'" the actor laughed.

Some folks have the ability to brush off criticism, but Armie Hammer is apparently not one of them. So much so that a negative essay published on BuzzFeed in November 2017, called "Ten Long Years Of Trying To Make Armie Hammer Happen," actually pushed him to quit Twitter.

In the article, senior culture writer Anne Helen Petersen asked "How many second chances does a handsome white male star get?" as she dissected Hammer's acting career, including all of its shortcomings. Proclaiming that he's starred "in failed Westerns, spy remakes, fantasies, and historical epics," she honed in on Hammer's extreme wealth (his great-grandfather is oil tycoon Armand Hammer) and proclaimed that since 2007 "he and his publicity team have never given up trying to Make Armie Hammer Happen." The piece appeared to hit a sore nerve. Rather than ignore it, Hammer responded on Twitter (via The Telegraph), calling it "bitter AF" before deleting his account altogether.

But the Buzzfeed article may have just been the straw that broke the camel's back. A few weeks before the scathing piece, Hammer told Vulture that after a clip of him dancing with some dorky moves in Call Me By Your Name went viral, he stepped away from social media because "anytime I would open up my Twitter, it was just a ton of that and I was like, 'Nope, I can't have my nose rubbed in this anymore. I'm out!'"

When Inquirer.net asked Armie Hammer if his good looks have ever gotten "in the way of career-boosting portrayals," the actor had quite the surprising answer. Rather than brushing off the question, he appeared to embrace it, coyly telling the magazine, "I feel like there's nothing I can really do about it. No, there's nothing anyone can do about physical appearances," he continued. "I mean, we look like what we look like, and it's just about coming to terms with it and accepting it." The Gossip Girl alum went on to add that he "really love[s] it" when he's approached with "interesting roles," gushing, "I love it when I get asked to play weird or complicated characters."

But despite his apparent desire to take on beefier parts, Hammer told Vulture how he's mostly winged it on-set. Recalling shooting Call Me by Your Name, he admitted that director Luca Guadagnino had to confront him about his approach. "My whole life, I'm bluffing my way through it all and Luca was just like, 'Nope, that doesn't work around here' — which was terrifying," he revealed. He also once complained about the difficulties of filming, telling Elle, "It's 18 hours on your feet, doing s***, and then you get a couple of hours of sleep and you wake up and do it again." He did, however, add, "But it feels good ... I love this way too much to turn it into work."