ARMIE HAMMER appeared to be Hollywood’s Mr Perfect, with his handsome looks and beautiful family, for more than a decade.
But now the 6ft 5in, blue-eyed star of Call Me By Your Name has been accused of having a very dark side.
A string of social media texts seem to suggest the 34-year-old American actor has a fascination with cannibalism and sexual domination.
The storm has led to Armie quitting action comedy Shotgun Wedding, which he was set to shoot with Jennifer Lopez, citing “spurious online attacks against me”.
The messages are allegedly from the screen star to an ex-girlfriend. They said he wanted to cut off her toe and carry it around in his pocket.
They went on to tell the unnamed woman: “I am 100 per cent a cannibal. I want to eat you,” and: “I need to drink your blood.”
The writer, describing himself as “Your Master”, said he wanted the woman to be his slave and to be his until she died.
The actor has branded the allegations “bull***t claims”.
The messages were leaked by an anonymous woman from an Instagram account named House of Effie, which has shared photos and voice messages alleged to be of Armie.
She has said other women have come forward to tell her of affairs allegedly with Armie “with some ending up in the ER (A&E).”
Dirty Sexy Money actress Bella Thorne defended the actor at the weekend, branding the screenshots of the messages “fake”.
The 23-year-old former Disney star, who recently joined adult subscription site OnlyFans, wrote on Instagram: “Leave him and his family alone. No way he’s a freaking CANNIBAL.”
In the past Armie has told of a girlfriend trying to stab him with a knife during sex and boasted that he liked grabbing women’s necks.
Those two incidents happened before he married US TV personality Elizabeth Chambers, the mother of his two children, in 2010.
His successful film career began with a standout role as twin entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss in The Social Network a decade ago.
Since then he has received a Golden Globe nomination for 2017’s Call Me By Your Name, played spy Illya Kuryakin in Guy Ritchie’s The Man From UNCLE in 2015 and was Felicity Jones’s co-star in 2018 legal drama On The Basis Of Sex.
But rifts in his marriage appeared after he made last year’s Netflix movie Rebecca.
The film featured some passionate love scenes — and there were rumours he and co-star Lily James were close on the set.
Shooting began in June 2019 and Armie announced his divorce in July 2020. The split was followed by one romance after another.
Last September he was seen on a date with Bruce Willis’s daughter Rumer, 32, who recently posted images of herself in leather bondage-themed poses.
The same month he stepped out with Jessica Ciencin Henriquez, 30, ex-wife of American Psycho actor Josh Lucas. And in December Armie hooked up with model Paige Lorenze, 22. It is US writer Jessica who has added fuel to the fire around the “domination” text messages.
She claimed on Twitter that they are “real” and later added on Instagram: “It takes an army to hide a predator.
“Behind every abuser is a team of people working hard to cover up the trail.”
The messages are genuinely disturbing in places. One states: “You just live to obey and be my slave. I will own you. That’s my soul. My brain. My spirit. My body.”
Another says: “Would you come and be my property till you die? If I wanted to cut off one of your toes and keep it with me in my pocket so I always had a piece of you in my possession?”
The actor has admitted going to extremes with dominant behaviour in the bedroom.
Talking about the period before he got married, he told Playboy magazine: “I liked grabbing the neck and the hair and all that.”
Seven years ago he told Elle magazine how a woman tried to slice him during a moment of extreme passion.
He said: “She was like, ‘True love leaves scars. You don’t have any’. “And then she tried to stab me with a butcher knife. Of course, I promptly broke up with her — seven months later.”
Californian-born Armie described his upbringing as “wholesome”.
His wealthy father, Michael, owned several businesses, including a film and television production company.
His great-grandfather was the multi-millionaire oil magnate Armand Hammer, who in 1976 was convicted of illegally donating large sums to US President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign.
When he was seven his family moved to the idyllic Cayman Islands, where he lived for the next five years and received a private education.
On his return to California he started to rebel against his cosseted existence.
After starting a fire, he was thrown out of the Christian school he attended in Los Angeles.
Armie confessed: “I felt caged. I poured lighter fluid outside the school and set it on fire.
“I was a bad criminal, because I wrote my name with the fluid, so they knew who had done it.”
Against his family’s wishes he dropped out of school to become an actor — and decided to push life’s boundaries.
He said: “I’d grown up in a household of so much love and so much good. Once I was on my own, I was like, ‘Let’s see how hot this candle can burn’.”
Armie settled down at 23, marrying Elizabeth. He later said he realised the value of a loving relationship and no longer wanted to be dominant in the bedroom.
The break-up of their marriage last year had a massive impact, and Armie sought therapy.
He was particularly upset about not being able to see his daughter Harper, six, and son Ford, three, for months during the pandemic.
Elizabeth had decided to stay in the Cayman Islands with their children, rather than risk returning to California, where Covid-19 infection rates are much higher.
This month Armie was reunited with his kids in the Caribbean islands after two weeks in quarantine. They are now trying to settle access arrangements in what could be a difficult divorce.
When they announced their split, Armie said: “Our children and relationship as co-parents and dear friends will remain our priority.”
Those anonymous “cannibal” screen grabs will not have helped Armie’s attempts to regain some normality with his family.
A source close to Elizabeth said she was shocked by the “messages”. She has told a friend she “believed” the women who claim to have received them, and said she was “shocked and saddened” by the BDSM and rape fantasies.
Armie is an actor who has liked to leave his comfort zone both on and off the screen.
One of his first roles was kissing Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2011 movie J Edgar. And his best-known part was playing a gay older lover in Call Me By Your Name. Becoming someone different is something he excels at.
How much the “cannibal” text messages are fantasy play-acting and how much they reveal about his true intentions are unclear.
As he once told a journalist: “I find myself at parties convincing people of the most heinously bullt things, just to get them to believe me.”
Last week, announcing he was pulling out of filming on Shotgun Wedding, the actor said: “I’m not responding to these bull***t claims.
“But in light of the vicious and spurious online attacks against me, I cannot in good conscience now leave my children for four months to shoot a film in the Dominican Republic.”
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
