Elizabeth Chambers (born August 18, 1982) is an American television personality and the founder of the Texas-based BIRD Bakery retail chain. During her career, she also appeared in various films, television series, and culinary shows. From 2010 to 2023, she was married to actor Armie Hammer.
Chambers was born on August 18, 1982, in San Antonio, Texas.[1][2][3] She is the oldest of four children, and her maternal grandmother, Maureen Carnathan, was of British descent and raised in India;[4][5] she helped care for her grandmother after she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.[6] Her parents divorced when she was two, and she and her mom left Texas, first for Colorado and then California, before returning to Colorado, where she attended high school.[6] She said that Texas always felt like a "safe space".[6]
Chambers had a passion for cooking from an early age as her mother and grandmother respectively owned one of San Antonio's first natural-food stores and ran a local catering company.[6][24] In a December 2022 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Chambers said: "In the world where you don't know what the outcome is going to be, if you know that you can combine two cups of sugar, one cup of butter, three cups of flour, you know the outcome, there is something so reassuring and therapeutic about that."[24]
Chambers is the proprietor of BIRD Bakery,[25][26][27] which opened in San Antonio in 2012 and in Dallas in 2016.[11][28][29] Its baked goods are based on recipes from her grandmother's kitchen,[9][30] and she said it "all felt very full circle" as the bakery in San Antonio is located one block away from the street where she was born.[6] As she oversaw the opening of the second bakery in Dallas, her family split time between Texas and California.[6] In 2019, two employees of BIRD Bakery, who were apparently acting independently, were charged with the theft of a total of over $120,000 from the business over several years.[31][32]
In June 2019, as the owner of BIRD Baker, Chambers was a guest judge on the Food Network's Best Baker in America.[33][34] In February and March 2020, she was also a guest judge on Chopped Sweets.[35] In June 2020, Chambers raised money for the San Antonio Food Bank.[36] In October 2020, she launched Vision Visors, which made face masks for children.[37] BIRD Bakery also partnered with cancer non-profit Salood, for which she helped design a cookie to benefit pediatric cancer patients.[38][39] Unsold food at BIRD Bakery is boxed and picked up by local non-profits, including among others churches, fire, and police departments, the Fisher House Foundation, and the Polycystic Kidney Disease Foundation.[40] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chambers ran BIRD Bakery from the Cayman Islands, where she had relocated.[6] In 2021, she opened a third bakery in Denver, Colorado.[6]
Chambers and Hammer separated in July 2020.[47] Citing irreconcilable differences,[48] Chambers filed for divorce, which was finalized in June 2023.[49][50] She said that for most of her marriage to Hammer, the couple was seeing psychotherapist Esther Perel,[6] and that a "divorce is a death" and it was "the last thing [she] ever wanted".[12] As of 2023, she was dating a 26-year-old European boyfriend who she said was helping heal "my body, my heart, and my mind".[6] By 2024, Chambers and her children moved back to the United States in Los Angeles.[48] Hammer's mother later acknowledged that he had infidelities,[51] and Hammer himself admitted in a 2023 interview to Air Mail of having had an affair in 2016, that their sexual relationship involved "consensual non-consent" role play, and that he confessed the affair to Chambers,[6] who avoided speaking publicly about him in the two years after their separation.[6]
In an Instagram post in February 2021, Chambers addressed sexual abuse allegations against Hammer, offering support for "any victim of assault or abuse",[6] while stating to be "shocked, heartbroken, and devastated" and that she "didn't realize how much I didn't know".[12] After watching House of Hammer, a Discovery+ docuseries about the abuse allegations,[52] having turned down the offer to take part to it, she told E! News: "It was obviously heartbreaking on so many levels and very painful. But at the same time, it exists ... The past is the past and all we can do is take this as a moment to learn and listen, and hopefully process and heal in every capacity."[12] She added that she considered herself a feminist and "in solidarity with anyone who has been a victim of any sort and hope they find healing".[12] In September 2022, released documents suggested that Chambers was involved with the multiple women who came forward with claims of abuse against Hammer. Based on messages posted by Effie (the main accuser against Hammer), there were allegations that Chambers collaborated with them. The messages, which were posted on Effie's Instagram account, showed that Chambers allegedly asked Effie to formally file a complaint against Hammer. Effie accused Chambers in a statement of wanting to "profit" from the situation.[53][54]
↑"Outstanding Alumni Awards". Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin. March 8, 2017. Archived from the original on January 27, 2021. Retrieved October 8, 2020.
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