Armie Hammer explains how to snort fake cocaine
Lifting the veil on movie magic
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CELEBRITY Armie hammer
The life of an actor is the perfect embodiment of "fake it 'til you make it," and sometimes that means learning how to make it look like you're snorting cocaine. Armie Hammer's character in Boots Riley's 'Sorry to Bother You' was quite a pro at the illicit activity, and he's just revealed how he made it look so real.
Hammer plays a corrupt CEO in the absurdist dark comedy, which involved snorting an impressively long line of cocaine. Actors have been known to snort fake substances in place of cocaine, but it hasn't turned out so well. Take, for example, Jonah Hill on the set of 2013's 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' where he had to snort so much fake cocaine that he ended up in the hospital, according to PageSix.
In Hammer's case, movie magicians learned from their mistakes and Hammer didn't actually ingest any powder at all through that rolled up Benjamin.
During Variety's Actors on Actors series, Hammer told Dakota Johnson, “It was like B12, but they had a hose that went down my shirt, into my hand. Then I had the wrapped-up $100 bill with the hose that went into that, so I didn’t even have to snort anything.”
Even without that kind of placebo replacement, Hammer delivered an extremely convincing performance that made it seem like he'd been waiting for this role his entire life.
“I loved the idea of playing a crazy character. Nobody ever asked me to play crazy characters," he told Johnson. "This was really the first time someone brought a fascinating, bizarre character...I get to be this guy who comes in and just acts like a f*****g lunatic. And I loved that idea.”
His 'Call Me By Your Name' performance continues to be lauded as some of his best work, but he seems to have really enjoyed this drastic change of pace.
Hammer also recalled that when Riley approached him for the role, the director told him he didn’t want anyone else for the part. "I later found out he asked 75 people to do it and they all said no, but thank God they said no because I got to do it,” he laughed.