Inside the Downward Spiral of Armie Hammer and Elizabeth Chambers Seemingly Ideal Marriage

Inside the Downward Spiral of Armie Hammer and Elizabeth Chambers' Seemingly Ideal Marriage
The surprise announcement that Armie Hammer and Elizabeth Chambers were divorcing after 10 years of marriage was just the beginning.
By NATALIE FINN

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"No. Words."

No one could blame Elizabeth Chambers for only having those seven letters to offer at first when she came across an Instagram caption that took a jab at the bizarre mess enveloping her estranged husband, Armie Hammer, who has been accused of sending graphic sexual messages, some of them fetishizing violence, to multiple women.

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On Jan. 10, an anonymous account going by House of Effie on Twitter and Instagram shared screengrabs of purported past DMs from Hammer. The since-deleted posts went viral (E! News has not verified the provenance or authenticity of the messages) and countless people chimed in, including writer Jessica Ciencin Henriquez, who had spent time with the actor and asserted her opinion that the messages were real.

The online chatter quickly broadened to allegations that he'd been controlling and emotionally abusive to women in the flesh as well, and his private Instagram account was soon unearthed, a page on which he didn't seem to take pains to come off like a nice guy. 

At first, Hammer's camp didn't return requests for comment, but after a few days, he slammed the "bulls--t claims."

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Decrying the "vicious and spurious online attacks against me," he announced Jan. 13 that he was exiting the upcoming action-comedy Shotgun Wedding, which he was supposed to start filming with Jennifer Lopez in the Dominican Republic. In a statement to E! News, he said that he couldn't "in good conscience now" take off and be away from his children for four months. (Josh Duhamel has since joined the film in his place.)

At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last March, Hammer and Chambers opted to ride out the indeterminate period of social distancing, remote interviews and production shutdowns in the Cayman Islands, where the kids could continue to attend school. While Hammer returned to Los Angeles after he and Chambers announced they were splitting up last July, he had since returned to Grand Cayman to be with his children for the first time in months. According to an October divorce filing requesting joint custody, he had been expecting Chambers to return to the U.S. with their 6-year-old daughter, Harper, and 3-year-old son, Ford, but she had stayed in the Caribbean.

And now, it's anyone's guess what she'll do next.

Pre-Oscars parties - Cadillac Oscar Week - Elizabeth Chambers 
Katie Jones for Cadillac
Her "No. Words." comment last week—on a Just Jared casting story that made an unsubtle nod to the accusation that Hammer's fetishes include cannibalism—was the first anyone had heard from Chambers publicly since the story exploded. Only yesterday the 37-year-old released a more extensive statement via Instagram, not mentioning her husband by name but seemingly addressing the scandal.

"For weeks, I've been trying to process everything that has transpired," Chambers shared in a Feb. 1 post. "I am shocked, heartbroken, and devastated. Heartbreak aside, I am listening, and will continue to listen and educate myself on these delicate matters. I didn't realize how much I didn't know. I support any victim of assault or abuse and urge anyone who has experienced this pain to seek the help she or he needs to heal. At this time, I will not be commenting further on this matter. My sole focus and attention will continue to be on our children, on my work and on healing during this incredibly difficult time."

She concluded, "Thank you for all of the love and support, and thank you in advance for your continued kindness, respect, and consideration for our children and me as we find ways to move forward."

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But long before their divorce announcement, their marriage had not always been the picture-perfect union it often looked like from the outside.

Armie Hammer, Elizabeth Chambers
Mike Pont/Getty Images
A source close to Chambers tells E! News that Hammer first confessed to his wife a couple of years ago that he had cheated on her, nor was that a one-time situation, but he was extremely apologetic and intent on trying to make it work. They started couples therapy, the source continues, and did keep on trying to save their marriage until it fell apart for good.

Chambers, however, was not aware of this other alleged side of Hammer's life or of his so-called darker interests, the source adds, and this was all a surprise to her. 

A rep for Hammer did not return a request for comment.

But "shocked, heartbroken and devastated" was how Chambers put it herself yesterday.

Armie Hammer, Elizabeth Chambers 
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Already married by the time Hammer's dual role as the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network really put him on the map in 2010, he and Chambers seemingly had one of the rarer kinds of celebrity love stories—i.e. enduring and undramatic.

After meeting through a mutual friend in L.A. when Hammer was only 19 and she was 23, it took about a year before their relationship turned romantic.

"I was like, 'You have to break up with your boyfriend because we have to start dating.' Her mouth kind of fell open," Hammer recalled to Elle in 2013 of how he finally won his wife over. "I said, 'You were made for me,' and she got this look on her face like 'don't you even.' I was like, 'Wait, wait! And I was made for you. We were made to be together. So we can do this 30 years from now, when I've gotten married a couple of times and you've gotten married a couple of times, or we can start now and end up 60 years from now sitting on a porch in rocking chairs, talking about how good an adventure the whole thing was.' "

Two years later they were husband and wife—though apparently Chambers still needed some convincing to take that trip down the aisle.

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"When we finally got together, Armie really wanted to get married," she told Town & Country in 2013. "He sat me down and said, 'Look, we don't have to do this. We could just go our own ways, and then one day you'll be 40 and divorced and we'll run into each other, and we'll laugh and go out to dinner and have this same connection, and we'll wonder why we wasted all of that time. Or we could just do it now and enjoy the ride."

It's unclear if he only told her that once and they remembered it happening at different times, or if that was his rationale on both occasions.

Calling Chambers his "soul mate," Hammer explained to Elle, "I like the idea of marriage. I like the idea that I have a best friend. It's just really comforting. I remember being single and trying to date, and it was just stressful and hard. It wasn't fun. This is fun. I mean, not to be graphic," he said, reportedly lowering his voice before adding, "but you can have sex and in the middle just start laughing about something totally funny. You can't do that with someone you're dating; you're too nervous."

An admitted daredevil who spent his downtime while shooting The Lone Ranger off-roading, rock-climbing and cliff-jumping, the actor said self-deprecatingly, "My wife says I have a frontal lobe issue. Your frontal lobe controls your danger response, like, 'Whoa, I shouldn't be doing this.' But she says it's okay, because your frontal lobe doesn't fully develop until around 30, so I have until then to get all this s--t out of my system and then I need to calm down."

And then he gave a heck of an example as to how he came to that conclusion.

Armie Hammer, Elizabeth Chambers, 2018 Golden Globes, Party Pics
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While, according to Hammer, he came from a loving, stable family (Hammer, as in Arm & Hammer), he said, "Once I was on my own, I was like, Let's see how hot this candle can burn." Describing a period of debauchery that included drinking too much, taking drugs and being with women who were "bad, bad news," he recalled one woman trying to stab him during sex.

"I should so not be telling this story," he noted. "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."

Hammer's gauntlet of publicity leading up to the release of the wildly hyped The Lone Ranger (which ended up bombing spectacularly at the box office) also included a Playboy interview—a sit-down situation that has tripped up more than one famous man over the years.

In his case, Hammer made headlines with an eyebrow-raising description of his premarital sexual proclivities, as well as the revelation that he and Chambers, while gallery-hopping on their first date, visited a sex shop.

"I liked the grabbing of the neck and the hair and all that," he shared. "But then you get married and your sexual appetites change. And I mean that for the better—it's not like I'm suffering in any way. But you can't really pull your wife's hair. It gets to a point where you say, 'I respect you too much to do these things that I kind of want to do.'"

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Armie Hammer, Paige Lorenze
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Paige Lorenze recently told E! News that she consented to engaging in BSDM with Hammer when they dated last year following his split from Chambers. She described him as "really charming, really handsome, funny," and said he introduced her to his parents, but she broke it off via text in December. "I was feeling anxious and always was kind of feeling sick to my stomach," she said. &