Disgraced Hollywood star Armie Hammer has addressed his #MeToo scandal in his first interview since the lurid accusations broke two years ago, saying that he tried to commit suicide in a moment of desperation.
The actor also said he was sexually molested at the age of 13, which he claimed led to his unusual sexual proclivities, which include BDSM and professed cannibalism.
Though a scion of his wealthy family — whose fortune came from Occidental Petroleum — Hammer said that he is now broke and in serious debt. He also maintained his innocence against accusations that he engaged in nonconsensual abuse.
The Lone Ranger star spoke to the site Air Mail about the scandal and how he has been recovering. He said he attempted to end his life in early 2021 while hiding out on 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 said. “Then I realized that my kids were still on shore, and that I couldn’t do that to my kids.”
Hammer said that between legal fees and acting jobs he was fired from, he lost somewhere between $14 million and $16 million in 2021 alone. “My financial status is I am not only broke; I am massively in debt,” he said.
While he a he “did get a loan from my family to pay for some legal fees,” Hammer said he has neither asked for nor received further financial support from them. “There was a point in all of this where I had to have a friend help me buy groceries.”
Hammer said he was sexually abused at 13 by a youth pastor at the church his family attended. He said the abuse lasted nearly 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 said. “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.”
At the time, Hammer said, he told only two people about the abuse — an older friend (who has since died) and his godmother, Candace Garvey. Air Mail reported that Garvey corroborated his account.
Hammer’s scandal effectively torpedoed his Hollywood career, turning him into an instant pariah. As Breitbart News reported, the actor was dropped by his talent agency, WME, as well as by his publicist in the weeks following the scandal.
In the Air Mail interview, Hammer denied that he engaged in non-consensual abuse toward women.
“Every single thing was discussed beforehand,” he said. “I have never thrust this on someone unexpectedly. Never.”
But he admitted to being emotionally abusive. “One million percent,” he said.
During the 2020 recent presidential race, Hammer was a vocal anti-Trump critic who trashed the then-president and his supporters on social media. He even called law enforcement “inherently racist.”
After a pair of box-office bombs (The Lone Ranger, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), Hammer came back into Hollywood’s good graces by starring in the Oscar-winning gay romance Call Me by Your Name opposite a then-relatively unknown Timothée Chalamet. The film’s director, Luca Guadignino, would go on to re-team with Chalamet for Bones and All, a film about cannibalism — which was shot in 2021, around the same time Hammer’s cannibalism scandal unfolded.
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com
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