By Jacob Shamsian From Thisisinsider

Armie Hammer’s parents didn’t let him watch TV when he was a kid.

He grew up in the Cayman Islands, “macheteing coconuts,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

He later grew up to be a famous actor anyway.

Armie Hammer had a nontraditional upbringing. He grew up part of an extremely wealthy family in the Cayman Islands (his great grandfather was an oil tycoon) in a tight-knit community where he was “macheteing coconuts.” And Hammer’s parents, he told The Hollywood Reporter, didn’t let him watch TV and he had limited access to films.

So when he moved to Los Angeles at the age of 12, his pop culture knowledge was a little rusty.

“I had zero pop culture references,” he said. “It was like, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know who Nirvana is. I don’t know who the Lakers are.’ People were like, ‘Have you been living on an island?’ ‘Yes, I have, actually!'”

He was allowed to go to the town’s single movie theater when he was younger, which gave him a frame of reference for moving pictures.

“When ‘Titanic’ came out, they put it on both screens for months. I probably saw it six or seven times,” he said.

Hammer quit high school to pursue acting when he was 17 years old and, after a few years, made it work. His big break was playing the Winkelvoss Twins in 2010’s “The Social Network.” Afterward, he was cast in big-budget movies like “The Lone Ranger” and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”

He’s now starring in the romance movie “Call Me by Your Name,” opposite “Timothée Chalamet,” which is already one of the best-reviewed movies of the year. See? Never let your parents’ TV ban stop you from following your dreams.

IMAGE: Armie Hammer. Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

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