More than three years after Armie Hammer was publicly accused of sexual misconduct and abuse, allegations which he has denied, the actor now says he’s “grateful” for his fall from grace.

“Whatever it was that people said, whatever it was that happened, I’m now at a place in my life where I’m grateful for every single bit of it,” Hammer said on a recent episode of the Painful Lessons podcast. “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. I never knew how to give myself love.”

Instead, the 37-year-old actor said, he sought validation from “this job where I was able to get it from so many people.” That changed in 2021, when Hammer was dropped by his talent agency and publicist after DMs that he allegedly sent describing graphic sexual fantasies—including rape, cannibalism, and violence—were leaked online. At the time, through a lawyer, Hammer denied all accusations of sexual misconduct and maintained that all sexual interactions had been “completely consensual, discussed and agreed upon in advance, and mutually participatory.” Two years later, in an interview for Air Mail, Hammer maintained that all allegations of rape are false—although he said he did engage in acts of “consensual non-consent” with one accuser, in which they role-played a rape scenario.

In March 2021, the Los Angeles Police Department opened an investigation into Hammer over a rape accusation dating back to April 2017. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced in March 2023 that Hammer would not face criminal charges because prosecutors were unable to prove that there had been “a nonconsensual, forcible sexual encounter.”

Hammer said in the new interview that the accusations caused “an ego death, a career death.” He has not acted onscreen since 2022’s Death on the Nile, which he began filming in 2019. “It’s almost like a neutron bomb went off in my life,” he said. “It killed me, it killed my ego, it killed all the people around me that I thought were my friends that weren’t—all of those people, in a flash, went away. But the buildings were still standing. I’m still here, I still have my health, and I’m really grateful for that.”

Hammer also acknowledged that some of the allegations surrounding him “felt so outlandish,” particularly the cannibalism stuff. (He was, for the record, accused of fantasizing about cannibalism, not actually engaging in the practice.)

“Now, I’m able to sort of look at it with a sense of distance and perspective and be like, that’s hilarious—people called me a cannibal and everyone believed them,” Hammer said. “They’re like, ‘Yep, that guy ate people.’ You’re just 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.”

With that chapter of his life mostly digested, Hammer is focused on raising his two children with Elizabeth Chambers, who filed for divorce from him in July 2020. Their divorce was settled last year. “For the last couple years, I’ve taken my kids to school every single day,” the actor said. “I’ve picked them up every single day from school. I drive them around. I take them to what they need to do and then I take them home to their mom.”