Actor Armie Hammer has finally addressed the scandals that have essentially seen him blacklisted from Hollywood, telling Air Mail that while he is not guilty of any criminal conduct he admits that he was emotionally abusive to women.
Here are the most revelatory parts of the interview.
He says he was sexually abused as a child
Hammer says at the age of 13 a youth pastor at his church sexually abused him for a year.
“What that did for me was it introduced sexuality into my life in a way that it was completely out of my control,” he told Air Mail. “I was powerless in the situation. I had no agency in the situation. My interests then went to: I want to have control in the situation, sexually.”
He says he told his parents that the pastor was making him uncomfortable, without getting into details but they essentially told him “This is a man of God. How dare you say these kinds of things?”
Hammer told Air Mail he told his godmother, Candace Garvey, at the time of the abuse and she corroborated his account to the news outlet.
Hammer admits he was emotionally abusive to women
“I had a very intense and extreme lifestyle,” Hammer told Air Mail. “I would scoop up these women, bring them into it—into this whirlwind of travel and sex and drugs and big emotions flying around—and then as soon as I was done, I’d just drop them off and move on to the next woman, leaving that woman feeling abandoned or used.” When asked if he was emotionally abusive to his accusers, he replied, “One million percent.”
“I’m here to own my mistakes, take accountability for the fact that I was an asshole, that I was selfish, that I used people to make me feel better, and when I was done, moved on. And treated people more poorly than they should have been treated,” he said.
Hammer says he engaged in BDSM but is not a criminal
Efrosina Angelova accused Hammer of raping her for a harrowing four hours but the actor says while he did have an affair with the then 24-year-old, everything was consensual or a “consensual non-consent scene.”
“This alleged rape was a scene that was her idea. She planned all of the details out, all the way down to what Starbucks I would see her at, how I would follow her home, how her front door would be open and unlocked and I would come in, and we would engage in what is called a ‘consensual non-consent scene,’ CNC.” Hammer says. “Every single thing was discussed beforehand. I have never thrust this on someone unexpectedly. Never.”
“That’s a very important part of the B.D.S.M. world,” he said. “The consent. Because you’re doing things that are pushing envelopes. You’re doing things that are beyond the [realm of] ‘Let’s have missionary sex with the lights off.’ You have to have that trust. You have to have that vulnerability with someone. You have to have that aspect of ‘I am willingly giving my control over to this person. You know, the sub [the submissive partner] is the one who actually has all the power. Always. They’re the ones who can say ‘stop’ at any moment. They’re the ones who set the boundaries.”
Angelova maintains that “there is in the region of 100+ people that Mr. Hammer had coerced into sexual acts.”
He became suicidal after the scandal broke
Hammer says that in February 2021 he attempted suicide while quarantining in the Cayman Islands.
“I just walked out into the ocean and swam out as far as I could and hoped that either I drowned, or was hit by a boat, or eaten by a shark,” he told Air Mail. “Then I realized that my kids were still on shore, and that I couldn’t do that to my kids.”
The actor says he lost between $14 million and $16 million in 2021 alone as he started to be removed from movie projects.
“My financial status is I am not only broke; I am massively in debt,” he says. “There was a point in all of this where I had to have a friend help me buy groceries.”
He wouldn’t change the past two years
Perhaps the most startling revelation in the interview is Hammer’s admission that he wouldn’t go back and change his horror past few years. He says it has made him a better person and father to his children.
“If someone came up to me and gave me a magic lamp and said, ‘There’s a genie in here, but it only gives you one wish. If you rub this lamp, the genie will come out and take you back two years in the past, and you could undo all of this,’ I wouldn’t do it,” Hammer told Air Mail.
“I’m now grateful for everything that’s happened to me, because, as it says in the ‘Twelve and Twelve’ [Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, the guidebook of Alcoholics Anonymous], pain is the touchstone of spiritual progress,” Hammer says. “I’m now a healthier, happier, more balanced person. I’m able to be there for my kids in a way I never was. I’m able to be there for my dad as he’s dying in a way that I would have never been able to be. I’m truly grateful for my life and my recovery and everything. I would not go back and undo everything that’s happened to me.”
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