Armie Hammer knows he’s not welcome in Hollywood’s “sandbox” anymore. So, he’s making his own luck — in the form of an autobiographical screenplay.

The Call Me By Your Name actor appeared on the Painful Lessons podcast to reflect on his acting career, which he says is “nowhere now.” It’s been three years since he was accused by multiple women of abuse and sexual assault in 2021, which lead to him leaving movie projects like Shotgun Wedding and being dropped by talent agency WME.

Hammer has denied the allegations against him. After an investigation into one woman’s accusation that Hammer raped her in 2017, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s said there was “insufficient evidence” to charge Hammer with a crime in 2023.

“It was an ego death, a career death,” Hammer said of being cancelled over the accusations. “A neutron bomb went off in my life. It killed off [everything]. … I am not a viable commodity for the entertainment industry, in terms of the Hollywood system. I am not welcome to play in that sandbox, for right now. I am not allowed in that sandbox. But I’m an artist. This is what I love to do. I have done nothing in my adult life except make films and do plays. It’s what makes my soul speak, it’s what makes me happy. It’s what I love.”

So, naturally, he’s writing a screenplay.

“Even though I’m not welcome in their sandbox, I just decided I’m going to make my own sandbox. If you won’t let me play in yours, I’ll go play in mine. I’ve written a script with my buddy Jerry. We’re in the middle of trying to put that project together,” he added.

“I don’t want to go into the details of it right now but we have a script and it’s something that we’re passionate about and it’s something that I’m going to go do. I don’t know what the future of that is going to look like, I don’t know what the response of that is going to be, but those are things out of my control. I’m powerless over what peoples’ response to it is going to be, essentially. But I can go do something that I’m passionate about. Just because they tell me I can’t do it doesn’t mean that I have to listen.”

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More on Armie Hammer’s Autobiographical Screenplay

The Painful Lessons podcast host said the script “mirrors [Hammer’s] life.”

“Writing this script has been incredibly cathartic,” Hammer said. “We took an original piece of source material that was then turned into a film that we looked at and said, ‘There’s a lot of parallels here, albeit some more subtle and some more overt.’ So we took that and made it much more autobiographical and adapted it so it would be something that is cathartic. I’ve got to say, working on a script and writing was just as fulfilling in terms of using creative muscles as being on a set, and in some ways, more. This is ours. We can do whatever the fuck we want. We’re really proud of it.”

He also called the cannibalism accusations against him “bizarre.” The accusations stemmed from an Instagram account called House of Effie, which was later made private, that shared screenshots of conversations in which someone — purportedly Hammer — described fantasies about violent sexual acts including drinking blood and cannibalism.

One of Hammer’s exes, Courtney Vucekovich, later told Page Six that Hammer had been emotionally abusive, and once told her he wanted to “break my rib and barbecue and eat it.”

Hammer refutes the cannibalism accusations. He also shared his side of the story last year in a tell-all interview with Air Mail. Last year, Discovery+ docuseries called House of Hammer featured interviews with several of the women who accused hammer of abuse, and also delved into the dark history of other men in the Hammer family.

“People called me a cannibal, and everyone believed them,” Hammer said. “They’re like, ‘Yep, that guy ate people.’ Like, what? What are you talking about? Do you know what you have to do to be a cannibal? You have to eat people! How am I going to be a cannibal?! It was bizarre.”

Now, the Social Network star says he’s “grateful” for losing his career.

“I’m actually now at a place where I’m really grateful for it because where I was in my life before all of that stuff happened to me I didn’t feel good I never felt satisfied I never had enough I never was in a place where I was happy with myself where I had self-esteem,” Hammer said. “I never knew how to give myself love. I never knew how to give myself self-validation but I had this job [as an actor] where I was able to get it from so many people that I never had to learn how to give it to myself.”

Main Image: Armie Hammer speaking at the 2015 San Diego Comic Con International, for The Man from U.N.C.L.E., at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. Photo by Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons