Armie Hammer

Armand Douglas Hammer (born August 28, 1986) is an American actor. He began his acting career with guest appearances in several television series. His first leading role was as Billy Graham in the 2008 film Billy: The Early Years and Hammer gained wider recognition for portraying the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss in David Fincher's biopic The Social Network (2010).

Hammer portrayed Clyde Tolson in the biopic J. Edgar (2011), played the titular character in the western The Lone Ranger (2013), and starred as Illya Kuryakin in the action film The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015). In 2017, he starred in Luca Guadagnino's romantic drama Call Me by Your Name, for which he received a nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor. The following year, Hammer portrayed Martin D. Ginsburg in the biopic On the Basis of Sex (2018). On Broadway, he starred in a production of Straight White Men in 2018.

In 2021, multiple women came forward with claims of abuse against Hammer. Hammer denied the allegations, which derailed his acting career; he abandoned several future projects and was dropped by his talent agency and publicist. After an investigation into Hammer by the LA County District Attorney and the LAPD, they declined to pursue criminal charges against him, citing insufficient evidence. Hammer returned to acting in 2024.

Early life and background

Armand Douglas Hammer was born on August 28, 1986, in Santa Monica, California. His mother, Dru Ann (née Mobley), is a former bank loan officer, and his father, Michael Armand Hammer, owned several businesses, including Knoedler Publishing and Armand Hammer Productions, a film/television production company. He has a younger brother, Viktor, named after their great-granduncle Victor Hammer.

Hammer has described his background as "half Jewish". His paternal great-grandfather was oil tycoon and philanthropist Armand Hammer, whose parents were Jewish emigrants to the U.S. from the Russian Empire. Armand's father, Julius Hammer, was from Odesa and was an early activist in the U.S. Communist Party in New York. Armie's paternal great-grandmother was the Russian-born actress and singer Baroness Olga Vadimovna von Root, from Sevastopol, the daughter of a tsarist general. His paternal grandmother was from Texas, while his mother's family is from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Hammer resided in Highland Park, Texas, an affluent town in the Dallas area, for several years. When he was seven, his family moved to the Cayman Islands, where they lived for five years, and then settled in Los Angeles. While residing in the Cayman Islands, he attended Faulkner's Academy in Governor's Harbour and Grace Christian Academy (a school founded by his father) in West Bay, Grand Cayman. As a teen, he attended Los Angeles Baptist High School in the San Fernando Valley. He dropped out of high school in eleventh grade to pursue an acting career. However, he subsequently took college courses at UCLA. Hammer said his parents disowned him when he decided to leave school and take up acting but later became supportive and proud of his work.

Career

2005–2015: Early work and breakthrough

Hammer's professional acting career began with small guest appearances in the television series Arrested Development, Veronica Mars, Gossip Girl, Reaper and Desperate Housewives. His first ventures into film began with a minor role in the 2006 film Flicka, as well as co-starring in a 2008 psychological thriller, Blackout. His first leading role in film came with his portrayal of the Christian evangelist Billy Graham in Billy: The Early Years, which premiered in October 2008. The film garnered Hammer a "Faith and Values Award" nomination in the Grace Award category, which is awarded for the Most Inspiring Performance in Movie or Television by Mediaguide, an organization that provides movie reviews from a Christian perspective.

After a long search, Hammer was hand-picked in 2007 by filmmaker George Miller to star in the planned superhero film Justice League: Mortal, as Batman/Bruce Wayne. The film, which was to be directed by Miller, was eventually canceled. The film's cancellation came in large part due to the looming 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike as well as stalled budgetary rebate negotiations with the Australian Government. In 2009, he played Harrison Bergeron in 2081, based on the short story of the same name by author Kurt Vonnegut, which premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival.

In 2010, Hammer's breakthrough film role was in David Fincher's The Social Network, about the creation of Facebook. He portrayed the identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, with actor Josh Pence serving as a body double during filming. The filmmakers utilized computer-generated imagery during post-production to superimpose Hammer's face over Pence's as well as the use of split-screen photography in certain scenes. In preparation for the film, Hammer stated that he had to learn how to row on both sides of a boat in order to play the twins, who are rowing champions. Hammer and Pence also went through 10 months of extensive twin boot camp in preparation for their roles, in order to "drill the subtle movements and speech patterns that the Winklevosses would have developed over two decades of genetic equality." This film earned Hammer his first critical plaudits, with Richard Corliss of Time magazine remarking that Hammer's portrayal of the twins was "an astonishingly subtle trompe l'oeil of special effects". For his role in the film, Hammer won Toronto Film Critics Association Awards for Best Supporting Actor.

Hammer's next role was that of the first associate director of the FBI, Clyde Tolson, in Clint Eastwood's 2011 film J. Edgar. The biographical drama, written by Dustin Lance Black, focused on the expansive career of J. Edgar Hoover, of which the titular role was portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio. The acting was largely praised, with David Denby of The New Yorker calling Hammer's performance "charming", and The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy describing it as "excellent". McCarthy goes on further in his review to particularly praise the chemistry between DiCaprio and Hammer, specifically in their depiction of the often speculated romantic relationship between their characters, observing that "the way the homoerotic undertones and impulses are handled is one of the best things about the film; the emotional dynamics, given all the social and political factors at play, feel entirely credible, and DiCaprio and Hammer excel during the exchanges of innuendo, covert desire, recriminations and mutual understanding." Despite this, the film received mixed reviews overall, in part due to the direction and writing, as well as pointed criticism of the makeup used to age DiCaprio and Hammer's characters. Both actors received Screen Actors Guild Awards nods.

The following year, Hammer co-starred with Julia Roberts and Lily Collins in Mirror Mirror (2012), playing Prince Andrew Alcott. In January 2012, he voiced the Winklevoss twins in an episode of The Simpsons titled "The D'oh-cial Network". In 2013, Hammer was cast as the title role of Disney's, The Lone Ranger, alongside Johnny Depp as Tonto, in an adaptation of the radio and film serials Lone Ranger. The film, released theatrically in July 2013, was considered a box office failure, grossing only $260.5 million worldwide on a reported budget of $215 million. In 2015, he starred in director Guy Ritchie's The Man from U.N.C.L.E., a feature film adaptation of the 1960s TV show The Man from U.N.C.L.E., playing Illya Kuryakin, opposite Henry Cavill.

2016–2021: Career progression

In 2016, Hammer played Sam Turner in the 2016 film The Birth of a Nation, directed by Nate Parker. The film, which premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival, won both the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. In January 2016, it was revealed that since 2013, Hammer was in contact with the family of the infamous drug lord Edgar Valdez Villarreal and secured the rights to film the life story of the cartel leader. He then had a role in the ensemble of Tom Ford's psychological thriller Nocturnal Animals, played Ord in the action film Free Fire, which was written and directed by Ben Wheatley, and played U.S. Marine Mike Stevens, in Mine.