Armie Hammer is back after being cancelled. But his choice of film is problematic

“Some people are able to grow without cataclysmic events befalling them and some people need an anvil dropped on their head,” former Hollywood star Armie Hammer says. “I guess I’m the latter.”

The 40-year-old American’s once-promising career took off in 2010 when, aged 24, he played both Winklevoss twins in The Social Network then starred in The Lone Ranger, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Call Me By Your Name and the play Straight White Men on Broadway.

But the anvil fell on him in July 2021. Now, with a controversial and repugnant new film – Citizen Vigilante – five years after his #MeToo cancellation, Hammer says on a Zoom call from Los Angeles that his life is “trending upwards” again with new roles.

Hammer’s disgrace started when multiple women came forward in 2021 – just months after his wife, television personality Elizabeth Chambers, filed for divorce – to accuse him of abuse ranging from emotional manipulation to, in one case, sexual assault.

A former lover revealed a series of lurid messages that suggested his sexual appetites extended to BDSM and cannibalism fantasies (two were “I need to drink your blood” and “I am 100 per cent a cannibal”). In a podcast recorded with Louis Theroux in late 2024, Hammer defended himself by saying the messages were one side of a conversation and, in a consensual relationship, he was “a bit of a provocateur” urged on by alcohol or drugs.

“I lost control of my desires,” Hammer said in the podcast. “I lost the ability to safely navigate my life because … my desires were unchecked and I had money and I had fame and I had attention and, more importantly, I had access to anything I wanted.”

One of these women alleged that Hammer had sexually assaulted her during their affair. He denied the allegation. Los Angeles police investigated and found, in 2023, that there was insufficient evidence to charge Hammer with a crime because of the “complexity” of the relationship.

But Hammer was drummed out of Hollywood, losing a film opposite Jennifer Lopez, a Paramount+ series, all his Hollywood representation and, for a time, access to his children.

In 2022, the documentary series House of Hammer included allegations that he abused women during what was styled as kinky sex or fetish play and also that the men of the mega-wealthy Hammer dynasty were abusive towards wives and mistresses for five generations.

It was a shocking fall for an actor who seemed to have it all: tall, handsome, charismatic and a strong enough actor for George Miller to cast him as Batman in a Justice League movie that failed to get off the ground. The great-grandson of the Russian-Jewish oil tycoon Armand Hammer, the actor had what seemed like a charmed family life with two children.

“But when do our insides ever match what people see on the outside?” he says.

Hammer started his own podcast – deleting all the episodes when his career revival began – and freewheeled his way through extended sessions in other people’s podcasts.

On the Punk Rock Sober podcast in March, he talked about how when he was famous with more than 1 million Instagram followers, his DMs were flooded with sexual offers “24/7” and he wasn’t strong enough to avoid that temptation.

Speaking from the home he rents in West Hollywood, near where his ex-wife lives so he can take his daughter, 11, and son, 9, to school then pick them up afterwards when he is not working, Hammer accepts on Zoom that’s a fair description of what went wrong.

“I don’t know that anybody is born with the resolve to withstand their specific brand or flavour of temptation to that level,” he says. “There’s really nothing that prepares you for that growing up.”

Hammer, who appears healthy with slightly greying hair and a moustache, says he was “a firm believer in nothing in moderation, especially moderation” at the time.

“That’s not a way to live a balanced life,” he says. “There’s clearly something else at play if you’re running that hot and that fast and that loose, and you have to get to the bottom of that. You have to figure it out.”

Hammer went to the Cayman Islands, where he spent part of his childhood, and sold timeshares among other jobs. “I loved selling timeshare,” he says. “I loved it. I was in an office in, like, khaki pants and a button-up shirt. I’d never had an office job.”

If rule one of being cancelled is lie low, rule two is get the therapy you need. Hammer refers to the 12-step program and behavioural therapy during the Zoom call.

Then an offer to star in a new film came out of the blue. Hammer says he cried when German director Uwe Boll emailed him a script for a low-budget vengeance thriller, Citizen Vigilante.

“I was just happy,” Hammer says. “It had been a while since anyone had asked me to play a lead role in a film. It was one of the things that I missed more than anything. Outside of my children or interpersonal relationships, it’s the thing that’s the most important to me.”

Shot in Croatia and set in an unnamed European country, Citizen Vigilante has become a charged entry into the immigration debate in Europe and the US. Hammer plays Michael Sanders, a wealthy American businessman with a military background, who takes violent vengeance on black African and Middle Eastern immigrants whose crimes, the film suggests, are leaving Europe in fear and poisoning democracy.

It plays so well into right-wing anti-immigrant rhetoric that Elon Musk made it free to watch on X for 48 hours in June then another 24 hours this week. After being banned in Germany, the film is now getting a digital release.

An online report in July quoted a source close to Hammer as saying the star was in tears watching Citizen Vigilante for the first time and called it “hateful” and “disgusting”. Hammer now dismisses that report as “the press machine doing its thing” and says his response was nothing like that.

Rule three of being cancelled: if you get a new film, don’t publicly bag it.

“I just remember thinking, ‘Oh, this movie is extreme’,” Hammer says of his reaction. “I knew what I was getting into but [Boll] does not pull any punches … I thought that we were shooting a small-budget film that would come out on streaming and disappear and no one would see it.

“And then it comes out and governments are talking about the film and Polish politicians are endorsing the film, Elon Musk tweets it out for free to 240 million people … Now it’s part of a global conversation and I was not expecting that.”

In truth, Citizen Vigilante is a hard film to defend, even for a brilliant timeshare salesman. It may not be the worst film to get a release this year but it has to be in contention.

The racist, anti-Islamic violence includes Sanders killing not just immigrants who are convicted criminals but their innocent family members, lenient judges and a SWAT team which comes after him.

“I don’t think it was the good ones that got out of your country,” Sanders says to an innocent immigrant father before executing him. “I think it was the bad ones. And I think you bought with you your archaic value system and your commitment to religion over democracy and over anything else, including the rule of law.”

How does Hammer feel about the way the film demonises all Muslim immigrants?

“I’m underqualified to really have an opinion, specifically in terms of European immigration policies,” he proffers, adding that he is American and “we’ve got enough of our own political issues”.

It’s a weak answer that deserves pushback: surely he thought about that when he watched the film?

“I think that there’s a reason that this movie found an exposed nerve,” he says. “It’s not my nerve but there are a lot of people who feel similarly to Sanders in the film …

“I have no idea what the answer is about immigration or integration or anything like that, but I know that there’s a lot of people who feel frustrated. And I think that this movie felt like their frustrations were heard for the first time.”

So is he OK with the film stirring up anti-immigrant anger that might have consequences in the real world? Last month in the UK, for example, protesters assaulted police and tried to storm homes they believed asylum seekers were living in.

Hammer asks for some time so he can give a considered answer.

“I don’t know if this movie specifically puts anyone in danger,” he says after a few seconds.“If it did, I can say conclusively that that was no one’s intention. This was not, for me specifically and that’s all I’m in control of, a ‘call to arms’ film.

“This was Death Wish. This was Dirty Harry. This is a vengeance film that people respond to. People love vengeance film. Prisoners with Hugh Jackman.

“I think people respond to vigilante films because there are thousands of things in each one of our lives [that feel unjust] and we wish there were things that we could do about it and there never is. This is an artistic expression of being able to tap into that frustration.”

So what can Hammer say now – if anything – that will make moviegoers put all the salacious admissions and allegations in the past and allow him to have a career again?

“Unfortunately, the reality of my life is that this is always going to follow me around,” he says. “This is the reality of the world that I’ve created for myself. I have to deal with the consequences of my own actions … As they say in the [12-step] program, wreckage, which is the damage that we do to our own life, has no shelf life …

“This is going to be something that when you Google my name, it will come up until Google and the internet are gone and that’s just something I have to live with and I have to accept. And in terms of peoples’ opinions, I’m now a firm believer that what other people think about me is none of my business.”

While more guarded than he was on podcasts before he had a film to promote, Hammer is obviously hoping moviegoers think he deserves another chance.

But with a comeback film this awful, getting out from under that anvil won’t be easy.

Citizen Vigilante is being released on digital platforms on September 2.

If you or anyone you know needs support, call Lifeline on 131 114 or 1800 RESPECT, a 24-hour national sexual assault, family and domestic violence counselling line, on 1800 737 732.

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Garry Maddox is a Senior Writer for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.AdvertisementAdvertisement