Hammer and the gavel
Call Me by Your Name star discusses scuffles in court and on social media
Armie Hammer is sitting in a hotel room, in the middle of telling a story, when his publicist coughs. Loudly. Hammer stops talking and turns to look at her. “What?” he asks, grinning innocently. “What?”
The need for a signal wouldn’t be a surprise. Hammer, who has become a Hollywood and internet favourite star over the last several years, has developed a reputation for having little filter, especially on social media. While it might stress out his “people,” it has turned him into a subject of fascination. The stakes are high for Hammer, 32, steadily rising through the fame ranks with an eclectic career, from big studio pictures to indie films to biopics. Hammer is in D.C. to promote On the Basis of Sex, inspired by the true story of a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones) and her work on a groundbreaking tax case that changed how the courts viewed gender discrimination. Hammer is in the co-lead role as her husband, tax attorney Martin Ginsburg; he’s the one who brings Ruth the case.
Hammer, the great-grandson of an oil tycoon, grew up in the Cayman Islands and Los Angeles, and dropped out of high school with dreams of becoming an actor. After a few TV parts — a football player on Veronica Mars, a wealthy scammer on Gossip Girl — Hammer landed his breakout role in 2010 playing Mark Zuckerberg nemeses, the Winklevoss twins, in Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network. Afterward, he played everything: The prince in the Snow White retelling Mirror Mirror; a slave owner in The Birth of a Nation; and the graduate student who falls for the son of his Italian host family in Call Me by Your Name.
“Maybe this is just a naive take on my part, but I’ve always felt like it’s OK to say no if you don’t respond to something,” Hammer said. “I can only think of maybe one time in my career where I wanted to say no and didn’t, and I really didn’t enjoy myself.”
Hammer doesn’t share which specific project — while he often says what he thinks, he doesn’t go that far. He apologized in 2017 for his comments equating sexual assault charges against Nate Parker, his Birth of a Nation co-star, with the sexual harassment civil suits against Casey Affleck, whose Manchester By the Sea was a fellow awards contender. He blamed the failure of The Lone Ranger on critics. And he made headlines for critical tweets to BuzzFeed reporter Anne Helen Petersen, who scrutinized his career in a lengthy piece titled 10 Long Years of Trying to Make Armie Hammer Happen. After the latter dust-up, Hammer quit Twitter. He came back, but he’s wary: “I’ve learned you just have to have healthy emotional boundaries, and whatever happens on Twitter is not real life.”
These days, Hammer is trying to stay focused on what’s real: He’s especially proud of On the Basis of Sex and playing Ginsburg ’s spouse, whom he feels is an under-represented type of film character — the husband who is a genuine, supportive equal partner.
The film, written by Ginsburg ’s nephew Daniel Stiepleman and directed by Mimi Leder, was in the middle of shooting in the fall of 2017 when the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke and the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements launched. Combined with the political climate and the extreme spotlight on the Supreme Court, the movie could not feel more timely. “You never know when you start making a movie where the zeitgeist is going to be or what’s going on in the court of public opinion,” he said. “I think that Mimi had her finger on that pulse and recognized that.” Hammer is quite familiar with the court of public opinion. He had another Twitter incident after the November death of comics icon Stan Lee, as he critiqued performative grieving on social media: “So touched by all of the celebrities posting pictures of themselves with Stan Lee. No better way to commemorate an absolute legend than putting up a picture of yourself,” Hammer tweeted. After much criticism, he deleted the post and apologized: “While attempting to provide some unnecessary social commentary about the current selfie culture, I ... inadvertently offended many who were genuinely grieving the loss of a true icon.” When asked about what he learned from the incident, Hammer pauses before answering carefully. “I think that there is a wrong way to be right.”
The coughing publicist cuts in before he can say anything else: “That’s how we’re going to end it.”
You never know when you start making a movie where the zeitgeist is going to be.