ARMIE HAMMER
“A HUGE PART OF THE JOB IS TO LOOK HANDSOME, KNOW YOUR ANGLES… THAT’S NOT WHAT’S INTERESTING TO ME”
Armie Hammer is an attractive, personable man. Ask any of his colleagues about him and they talk about his towering frame, good looks and charm (“he exudes this extraordinary presence, and you think: ‘God – matinee idol!’” says his Rebecca costar Kristin Scott Thomas, while Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino describes him as “this dashing golden boy”). To watch him stride about the Hatfield House set of Ben Wheatley’s new take on Daphne du Maurier’s classic gothic romance, Rebecca – 6’5” of black tie elegance, warmly chatting with everyone and letting out head-back laughs – is to see that persona in action.
It’s a definition Hammer, 34, has got used to after a 15-year career playing leading men since his breakout role(s) in The Social Network. But it’s also one that he’s working his damnedest on subverting. Over a series of chats with TF during 2020’s weird summer, where the actor called in from a July road trip in Monument Valley, from LA in August and from a September visit to his grandparents in Dallas, it’s clear that what really drives him is a desire to challenge both himself and audiences, as well as a belief in the power of unvarnished hard graft. (He’s extended that artistic industriousness to physical toil too, having spent two months of lockdown working in construction.)
It would be natural to assume it had all come easy to this LA-born heir of the wealthy Hammer clan, who spent his childhood in the tax haven of Grand Cayman. But Hammer dropped out of high school to pursue acting and found out the hard way that a career would not fall into his lap.
“It’s not an easy endeavour to undertake,” he recalls. “You’re dealing with a borderline insurmountable amount of competition, there’s a lot stacked against you, so you really have to outlast the person next to you. But once I learned that it was more about tenacity than anything else, I was like, ‘OK, well, I have enough of that.’”
Tenacity got him that first Fincher gig, and it picked him up, spurring him onto a path of chasing fear in his roles. That’s led to unexpected, sometimes dark, choices for someone who could trade on romantic leads and action men: Ben Wheatley’s ballistic ; awards-bait ; classy biopic ; corporate satire ; Babak Anvari’s horror ; plus two Broadway runs. And now he’s using that golden boy image to play two ostensibly glamorous have-it-alls with churning undercurrents. First up is Max de Winter, the hot, wealthy widower whose new spouse (Lily James) finds herself in competition with the reputation of his late wife in Netflix’s opulent adaptation of . And then comes penniless smoothie Simon Doyle, who marries a rich heiress (Gal Gadot) and discovers murder on their honeymoon in Agatha Christie’s . Both projects fit in with a quest he talks about a lot during our chats – of being an artist rather than a star.
