Mexico City.- Armie Hammer revealed that he was sexually abused by a pastor as a child and that thoughts of suicide crossed his mind, after being embroiled in allegations of sexual violence and cannibalism.
In his first interview since 2021 for Air Mail, the actor also denied the allegations of sexual violence that were made public.
“What that did for me was it brought sexuality into my life in a way that was completely out of my control. I was powerless in the situation. I had no agency in the situation. So my interests were: I want to be in control of the situation, sexually,” Deadline reported about the events he experienced as a child.
The site says he admitted to being emotionally abusive to a number of women and entered into BDSM encounters, but denies the allegations of sexual violence in detail.
“Everything was discussed beforehand. I have never pushed this out of the blue. Never.”
Hammer was enjoying the prime of his career in early 2021 with the film Call Me By Your Name, when several young women posted text messages with screenshots claiming to be of the actor, describing fantasies involving sexual violence, rape and cannibalism.
At the time, Hammer denied that they were his. In March 2021, one of the women accused him of rape, an accusation he also denied, and the charges were later dropped.
…hoping to drown myself
After the scandal, Hammer withdrew from projects such as Shotgun Wedding with Jennifer Lopez and two television roles in The Offer and Gaslit, with Julia Roberts and Sean Penn, but the strongest damage was in his emotional life, in which he even had suicidal thoughts.
“I just went out into the ocean and swam as far as I could in the hope of drowning, or getting hit by a boat, or eaten by a shark.
“Then I realized that my children were still on land and that I couldn’t do that to my children,” said the embattled actor, who was living in the Cayman Islands to escape.
Hammer, who shares two children, Harper, 8, and Ford, 6, with his ex Elizabeth Chambers, has been the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department after being accused of rape, sexual misconduct and the exhibition of cannibal fetishism and BDSM fantasies.
“I’m here to own up to my mistakes, take responsibility for the fact that I was a jerk, that I was selfish, that I used people to make myself feel better, and when I was done, I moved on,” Hammer said.
“Now I am a healthier, happier, more balanced person. I can be there for my children in a way that I never was,” she added.
He entered rehab for drug and alcohol abuse soon after, and is currently spending his time as a sober partner for another person who just got out of rehab, he shared in the interview.
“If someone came up to me and gave me a magic lamp and said, ‘Here’s a genie, but it only grants you one wish. If you rub this lamp, the genie will come out and take you back two years, and you could undo all of this, I wouldn’t do it,” he said.
However, he knows that raising his career will be something that will cost him a lot of work, because it is something with which he will have to learn to live.
“Nobody is going to hire me. Nobody will insure me. I can’t get involved in a project, nothing. And nobody is going to touch me because if they hire me, then they are the people who support the abusers.”
