Armie Hammer Details Life in ‘Small, Rented House’ After Furious Scandal

Actor Armie Hammer has opened up about his return to Los Angeles—and his Hollywood career—in the wake of a well-documented sexual assault scandal that ended his marriage and destroyed what was, at the time, a glittering rise to the upper echelons of movie stardom.

Hammer, 39, who is the great-grandson of oil tycoon Armand Hammer, was accused of sexual assault and even cannibalism by multiple women in January 2021—accusations he has repeatedly denied.

The “Call Me by Your Name” star never faced criminal charges over the sordid accusations, but the fallout from the scandal saw his once-illustrious career blown apart.

He was dropped by his agency, WME, and reportedly lost multiple film roles as the industry attempted to distance itself from the horrifying allegations levied against him.

Now, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in what is being billed as his “first major sit-down in years,” Hammer has lifted the lid on how his life has changed in the wake of those accusations and how he is slowly trying to piece back together his career, albeit while living a drastically different lifestyle than the one he enjoyed before he became a Hollywood pariah.

Looking back on his life immediately after the scandal broke, Hammer said everything was essentially turned upside down—his former wife, Elizabeth Chambers, with whom he shares two children, had filed for divorce in 2020 while the family was quarantining together in the Cayman Islands, and the actor returned to Los Angeles without a home base.

Before the scandal erupted, Hammer and Chambers had been living with their children in a stunning Tudor-style mansion in Los Angeles, which they purchased for $4.7 million in 2019, two years after he starred in “Call Me by Your Name” alongside Timothee Chalamet.

Soon after Chambers filed for divorce, the former couple listed the stunning home in September 2020 for $5.8 million, about a million more than what they paid the year before.

The following month, they dropped the price to $5.3 million. Later in the year, it dipped to just under $5 million. It was finally sold for $4.7 million in 2021.

While his wife and children moved into a new home, Hammer was forced to find alternative living arrangements.

He initially spent time couch surfing between the homes of friends who were kind enough to take him in, before ending up in a tiny rented apartment in Venice, which the outlet notes was so small it “had a Murphy bed.”

Hammer said he became consumed by the internet chatter about him in the early days after his accusers came forward, admitting that he “was obsessively reading” everything that was being said about him online, before realizing that there was “no nutritional value” in it.

So, he pivoted, and instead focused his efforts on improving himself as a father, a son, and a friend—putting all of his energy into his two children, Harper Grace and Ford Douglas Armand.

“I realized I could just focus on myself and my kids and staying healthy and growing as a person. You can make that your purpose,” he said.

The actor also began spending more time back in the Cayman Islands, where his father, Michael, had citizenship, enabling Hammer’s family to quarantine there—but also ensuring he had somewhere to turn when the scandal was at its most frenzied.

When his father became sick with cancer, Hammer was there to care for him, saying that he “would bathe him and cook food for him and feed him and change his diapers and do all that stuff,” while also working to repair their once-fractured relationship.

Michael passed away at the age of 67 in November 2022—and many assumed the inheritance Hammer received would more than ensure his financial stability for the rest of his life, even if he remained without another acting job. Hammer’s grandfather, Armand, had been worth a reported $800 million at the time of his death in 1990 and Michael is said to have inherited around $180 million of that wealth.

However, the actor said that the reality of his inheritance is far more complicated than some numbers on paper, insisting that the money he received from his father won’t even enable him to spend the next few years without a job, let alone the rest of his life.

“It’s just one of those things that’s so complicated, you have to be a tax attorney to fully understand it,” he said. “But the end result was not I’m set for the rest of my life, or even for the next couple of years. It hasn’t been that.”

Indeed, when Hammer returned to Los Angeles in 2024, he moved, not into a mansion, but into another rental in West Hollywood, although this time a home, rather than the “shoebox” he had been residing in previously.

He told the outlet that he adheres to a very strict daily routine, one that revolves almost entirely around his children, with a few work projects added in when he is able to secure them—which he has done on several occasions in the two years since he’s been back in L.A., although he notes his reputation is far from repaired.

Hammer wakes up every day at 6:30 a.m., makes his bed, cleans his home, makes coffee, then meditates outside, doing what he refers to as a “gratitude practice.” He then meets Chambers at her home, makes breakfast for their kids, and takes them to school, picking them up almost every afternoon when he isn’t working.

Still, “The Social Network” star, who famously played both of the Winklevoss twins in the film, is candid about his struggle to reintegrate himself into Hollywood, comparing that ongoing process to “Sisyphus pushing the boulder.” However, in his case, it feels like his “boulder is covered in Vaseline.”

He does shoulder much of the responsibility for what happened, telling the publication: “I made these problems for myself. This didn’t happen to me by a fluke accident. I didn’t do what people are saying I did. But I brought very dangerous and unsafe people into my life, and I pissed off people in my life—and here we are.”

The actor previously opened up about his financial struggles soon after returning to L.A., revealing in an emotional August 2024 Instagram video that he was being forced to sell a truck he had bought himself “as a Christmas gift” in 2017 because he could no longer “afford the gas” to run it.

“So I’ve been back in L.A. for a couple of weeks now,” he began his video, while showing off his black pickup truck. “I bought this for myself in 2017 as a Christmas gift for myself. I’ve had pickup trucks for a long time, and I have loved this truck intensely and taken it camping and across country multiple times and on long road trips.

“And I took it for one last road trip to CarMax. This is not an ad for CarMax. This is because I am selling my truck,” he continued. “Since being back in L.A., I have put about $400 or $500 worth of gas in it and I can’t afford it. I can’t afford the gas anymore.”