Armie Hammer giving it us the cold smoulder
It has been a tricky time for actor Armie Hammer, 34, who leapt to our attention for his mesmerising performance in gay coming of age romance Call Me By Your Name. He’s been a big star for a while now, with lead roles in Hollywood blockbusters like Man from UNCLE as well.
Calls for his cancellation have been coming in thick and fast since his alleged sexually dubious texts were leaked to the press with some rather shocking content. Many of us have been swept up in the moment and written sexually explicit things that perhaps we might regret the next day (cue fevered shame deleting when you wake up) so is it ok to then judge Hammer for seemingly inappropriate and more-than-a-little-creepy texts? It’s the content that as people running for the hills though, which we’ll get to later.
Is Hammer a tool?
Whilst Hammer denies writing the texts or fantasising about such things, the admittedly shocking sexts did the rounds with all the usual gossip columns. The looked like they came from his account and left people wonder just what strange sexual preferences he’s into and also whether or not the texts themselves were real or fake.
Call him by any name, just not a cannibal! With Timothée Chalamet
So, to the content. The texts include references to rape, cannibalism, blood play along with fantasies including all three. Pretty scary stuff. The question is, if they are real is it a violation of his privacy to leak them? Is this the same sort of thing as revenge porn? While it’s illegal to release intimate pictures of ex partners in order to embarrass/ruin them, how about explicit messages?
Since the story broke last week there have been a few developments. Firstly, he has had to pull out of the Jennifer Lopez movie Shotgun Wedding he was due to star in and it now looks like Josh Duhamel is going to be replacing him.
From bad to worse
Next up he has apologised and also been spoken to by the police for a video, allegedly stolen from his social media account, of woman on all fours with her face obscured. He describes having to go to the Cayman Islands to see his children ‘except there are a few silver linings. Like fucking Miss Cayman again while I’m down here’
Might not be the time for a skinhead and 'tache look whilst having beers on the golf course...
Meanwhile ex-girlfriend Paige Lorenze has since claimed that he carved an ‘A’ into her pubic area and then ‘bragged about it to her pals’. Even more disturbingly she says he was ‘100% serious’ about getting a doctor to remover her bottom ribs so he could eat them. Things certainly seem to have gone from bad to worse for Armie. While the initial spooky scandal is certainly in a grey area when it comes to what people do or say in private, as more information comes out with no real rebuttal from him it makes things a lot harder to fathom. Whatever the outcome, he has a PR nightmare on his hands and will need an army of agents to clear this mess up.