Can Armie Hammer stage a comeback?

It must seem very strange to Armie Hammer — once a successful, if not quite an A-list actor, who has latterly been reduced to selling timeshares in the Cayman Islands — that his career has taken such a decisive dive into the dumpster. Not very long ago, he was appearing in leading roles in the likes of Death on the Nile and Rebecca, and then his life went into a nosedive because of allegations of everything from cannibalism to sexual abuse. In present-day Hollywood, there is no such thing as a presumption of innocence until guilt is proved, and Hammer was fired from various projects, as well as being dropped by his agency and management company. His days of fame appeared to be over.

It is unclear whether the recent news that, after a lengthy investigation, he will not be charged with any crimes is likely to alter this. “Sexual assault cases are often difficult to prove, which is why we assign our most experienced prosecutors to review them,” the Los Angeles County DA’s office said. “In this case, those prosecutors conducted an extremely thorough review, but determined that at this time, there is insufficient evidence to charge Mr. Hammer with a crime.”

It was hardly a ringing endorsement of Hammer’s innocence, given his now well-documented interest in kinky sex — “due to the complexity of the relationship and inability to prove a non-consensual, forcible sexual encounter, we are unable to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt” — but nonetheless, unless some new evidence comes to light, Hammer will continue to go about his life a free, if troubled, man.

The question now is whether he continues to ply his trade in luxury timeshares, or if he attempts to rebuild any kind of acting career. In the case of Kevin Spacey, who is currently awaiting trial in London on charges of sexual assault and indecent assault, the disgraced actor — that increasingly well-used phrase — has been taking roles and work apparently at random, evidently desperate to pursue his vocation, whatever the opportunity. (If you’re a student filmmaker keen to secure a double-Oscar-winning actor for your short, now’s your chance, but hurry: Spacey’s trial begins on June 28.)

But if Hammer looks to the example of Johnny Depp, whose legal defeat in London when suing the Sun newspaper for calling him a wife-beater has been substantially overshadowed by his court victory over ex-wife Amber Heard, he can see that Depp now has a new act in his career, even if his mainstream Hollywood stardom seems to be at an end. Hammer has stayed largely silent about his fate, with the exception of a bitter interview he gave to James Kirchick at Airmail earlier this year, in which he railed against contemporary cancel culture and revealed that Robert Downey Jr. — himself a man who has known his fair share of controversy before he became the toast of superhero Hollywood — had acted as his sponsor and benefactor, paying for him to stay in an expensive rehab center for six months. Leaving aside the question of what, exactly, Hammer was being rehabilitated from — his cannibalistic fetish? — there are increasing numbers of resentful men who feel, rightly or wrongly, that they have been thrown out of the industry on trumped-up charges.

Hugo Speer, one of the stars of the forthcoming FX series The Full Monty, recently revealed to a tabloid newspaper that he had been fired from the show after being accused of indecently exposing himself to a runner in his trailer; as Speer noted, an actor’s trailer is generally a place where one might expect an actor to be found naked. Yet there is a growing sense that corporations are panicking at the first suggestion that the actors they employ might be anything other than paragons of virtue, and are taking decisive, often irrevocable action on little more than hearsay and suggestion.

Whether Hammer is likely to recover his previous stardom — and it seems deeply unlikely, given that he has been reduced to a sinister laughing stock in public opinion — it would be worth remarking to all the various executives and producers who have acted so hurriedly that “let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” and that for every apparently cut-and-dried case, there will be countless more ambiguous and uncertain ones.

As Hamlet remarks to Polonius, “Use every man after his desert, and who shall escape whipping?” Hammer may have had his career ruined forever, but the continued ability of the likes of Depp and Mel Gibson to remain in work — and, in the case of the latter, to be nominated for Oscars and to thrive — suggests that cancel culture is coming up against common sense. It is likely, though, that there can only be one winner.