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Relive with me and enjoy again the downfall of Armand Douglas Hammer. If you remember, Hammer’s Hollywood career had been going as smoothly as anything: there was his 2010 breakthrough playing the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network, his turn as Leonardo DiCaprio’s no. 2 in Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar, the 2018 Golden Globe for Call Me By Your Name. By 2020 he was a GQ cover star: “Soul seeker. Scene stealer. Leading man.”
And cannibal, allegedly. In January 2021 an anonymous Instagram account called @houseofeffie posted screenshots supposedly showing Hammer’s texts to a woman. “Thinking of holding your heart in my hand and controlling when it beats,” the message read. “I am 100 percent a cannibal.” An ex-girlfriend came forward and confirmed to the MailOnline that yes, now you mention it, Hammer had had some strange sexual tastes when they were together, too: “He was really into saying he wants to break one of your ribs and eat it. Like, barbecue it and eat it,” she said.
Two months later, the anonymous woman revealed herself in a press conference as Effie Angelova and accused Hammer not just of cannibalism, but rape.
Down went the Hammer. A few months before posting the messages with Hammer on Instagram, Angelova had sent them to Hammer’s wife of ten years, television personality Elizabeth Chambers. Hammer admitted to the affair but not the cannibalism. Chambers had already filed divorce papers by the time Angelova said he’d raped her. Hammer was dropped by his talent agency, booted off his upcoming projects, went to live on the Cayman Islands and became a timeshare salesman. He swam into the Caribbean Sea to try kill himself, but didn’t follow through. Chambers made him take a psychological legal assessment to evaluate whether he was a danger to their two children.
Hammer has consistently denied any criminal wrongdoing and maintained that all of his sexual relationships were consensual. In June 2023, the Los Angeles Police Department decided not to charge Hammer. Now a free man, Hammer has moved back to Los Angeles into a little apartment and has started The Armie HammerTime Podcast. The show began in October, and Hammer says he wants it to be “a sort of journal, or a chronicling, of putting my life back together.” He hosts barefoot, in jeans and a black T-shirt, from a sparse living room, and his guests sit on a brown sofa he says he bought on Facebook Marketplace on the cheap.
The first episode is with the comedian Tom Arnold, and I’d skip it. Hammer is not a good host and Arnold just won’t shut up. He regurgitates old and long-winded stories, such as how he once went into a drug den thinking he was saving Kiss’s Peter Criss from addiction, but in fact was just apprehending a junkie who looked like Peter Criss. The real Peter Criss sued Arnold for $50 million for telling the press that he’d rescued Peter Criss. Arnold, we learn, had also been arrested for kidnapping the junkie who looked like Peter Criss.
Ignore all of this and listen to the second episode with Hammer’s mother, Dru, in which the pair have a two-hour conversation about their messed-up relationship. Dru is an evangelical Christian, and Hammer tells his listeners that, for a period, they didn’t speak because she kept trying to make him a Christian too. He has an image of a Buddha in his flat and she calls him a demon-worshipper.
They then talk about how Hammer was sexually assaulted at thirteen by a pastor. “I know everyone was doing the best that they could. But, like, I did genuinely feel unprotected in that situation,” he tells her. “I did not protect you from a molester,” she admits. Hammer then wonders if his extreme sexual tastes were the result of his abuse.
Hammer also says that his mother cares too much about her God and too little about him. “When you and I interact there’s never a genuine curiosity about where I am,” he tells her. “I would like a mom who I feel sees me for where I am and who I am and accepts me as I am.” She counters: “This is who I am.” A truck beeps outside. “I don’t need a pastor, I need a mom,” Hammer says.
HammerTime will probably only be interesting as long as Hammer remains in a bad place, mining away at his old trauma, allowing us to feel smug in our own dull lives. It was Hammer’s faultless rise that made his sudden downfall so compelling, and HammerTime promises an extended edition of this karmic story.
Our protagonist came close to brilliance, then collapsed spectacularly — a brutal plot line repeated with great success for millennia. If we also get a director’s cut, behind-the-scenes footage, and perhaps a couple of starry interviews, I’ll take it all. Armie Hammer has produced an American feel-good classic.
