Armie Hammer tried to be a superhero once. Nearly a decade ago, Hammer—a strapping, 6-foot-5inch superhero stand-in in real life—was cast as Batman in director George Miller’s proposed film, Justice League Mortal. “And then the project just disintegrated,” he recalls. “And I realized, ‘Oh, that might be my sign. That might be my omen.’” Instead Hammer, 30, the great-grandson of late industrialist and philanthropist Armand Hammer, went on to play somewhat more grounded action heroes: first in The Lone Ranger, opposite Johnny Depp, and then in 2015’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. It’s perhaps best not to speak of The Lone Ranger, a known box-office flop, but U.N.C.L.E., directed by Guy Ritchie and co-starring Alicia Vikander and Henry Cavill, was a stylish and fun action caper. Still, says Hammer, who played Russian spy Illya Kuryakin, during the long shoot around Europe, “I felt like a prop.” “I went for a whole month of, ‘Go stand over there and skulk. Go stand over there and be a spy,’” he recalls. Filming blockbusters “moves slowly,” he explains. “It takes a long time to get scenes done. It just drags.” After U.N.C.L.E., he told his agent, “I want to do a tiny movie. I want to do something really interesting, do what I’ve studied to do. I want to act.” Nothing involving stunt sequences and special effects. His agent suggested he meet with actor Nate Parker, who had been trying to get The Birth of a Nation, a movie about the 1831 Nat Turner slave uprising, off the ground. “I sat with Nate and his passion is infectious,” Hammer says. “I couldn’t not do the movie.” The Birth of a Nation eventually sold to Fox Searchlight at Sundance Film Festival for a record $17.5 million. (The film and Parker have had their own controversies, but prognosticators still see it as a major player in the Oscar race.) Hammer’s character, Samuel Turner, whose family owns the plantation where Nat Turner grows up, begins as an ally to the protagonist, played by Parker, who also wrote and directed the feature. But as the film proceeds and the two friends age, their relationship takes on a sinister tone. “He becomes this detestable person, but you see why,” Hammer explains of Samuel. “I liked that there was a character progression.” Getting into the sometimes-ugly headspace was helped by a set of hideous fake teeth “that looked like I’d never met a toothbrush,” he laughs. The whole experience of filming in Savannah, Ga., “just reminded me that, without sounding like a douchebag, I love to act.” “Big movies are great,” adds Hammer, who broke onto the scene with his role as the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network in 2010. But being a performer is “also about scratching that creative itch. If you’re making a movie you’re happy about, it doesn’t matter how hot it is while you’re wearing a three-piece suit. Even if you’re sweating and carrying your own equipment, you’re just happy.”
“I never set goals or aspirations,” says Hammer. “But I’m thrilled with the way things are going.” Since The Birth of a Nation, Hammer has mostly stuck to those small, independent movies to keep scratching that creative itch. The next year will bring Hotel Mumbai, about the 2008 attacks on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, which he began filming in Australia and will finish in India. Call Me by Your Name, based on “one of the sexiest books I’ve ever read in my life,” by André Aciman, brought Hammer to Italy. The film follows the intimate relationship between two male characters and features graphic nudity. “It scared the shit out of me,” says Hammer, “but it’s one of the best creative ventures of my career. I would do it again tomorrow.” And then there is this fall’s eagerly awaited Nocturnal Animals, directed by Tom Ford, in which he plays Amy Adams’ husband in an empty, loveless marriage. Hammer and his wife, actor Elizabeth Chambers, met Ford in Los Angeles. Besides The Social Network and 2011’s biopic J. Edgar, Nocturnal Animals, a thriller, marks the only other feature Hammer has filmed in and around the city of his birth and current residence. “It’s a really interesting experience,” says Hammer, of working in his hometown. “You go to work all day, you come home and you do chores. You think, ‘I guess I’ll make food for the baby.’ You’re not afforded the luxury of being able to disconnect to focus on everything you’re doing. There’s a sense of reprieve when making a movie on location.” Though Hammer spent parts of his childhood in Dallas and the Cayman Islands, he returned to L.A. for high school and, since then, has always found his way back. “If you come to this city and you’re tenacious, you can do anything you want,” he says. “You can find a new L.A. every day.” His current Los Angeles is a rather domesticated one. “I’m a family man,” he says of life with Chambers and their daughter, Harper. (Baby No. 2, announced at the Toronto International Film Festival, is on its way.) “I cook breakfast for everybody. We’ll go to the park, to visit friends, to art galleries,” says Hammer, whose grandfather founded Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum. “We’re living L.A. through the eyes of a 2-yearold. You’re experiencing things that have always been there with fresh eyes.” Continued on p.116
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