In the award-winning film The Hurt Locker (2008), Katherine Bigelow offers a stark look at the lives of American soldiers in Iraq. Two-time Oscar nominated actor Jeremy Renner plays Sergeant William James, an adrenaline-seeking bomb-defusing expert. He’s that rare specimen of humanity that does not just flirt with death, but also seems to be actively courting it. In one scene, David Morse’s Colonel Reed, seemingly amused at James’ recklessness, says to him, “You’re a wild man... you know that?”
Renner, 54, is not new to playing raw, rugged characters for whom death and danger are every day realities. Like in Dahmer (2002), the biopic of a brutal serial killer, or in The Town (2010), about four friends scheming to rob a bank. And then, of course, came Marvel’s The Avengers (2012), in which Renner played the hardened archer Clint Barton aka Hawkeye, which propelled him to new heights of fame. In one scene, when he comes back to himself after being brainwashed by Loki (Tom Hiddleston), he asks another member of the Avengers whether they know what it feels like to be unmade.
More than 10 years later, Renner would know what being unmade would feel like in a way he never would have imagined. On January 1, 2023, Jeremy Renner “died”. It happened after he was run over by a 14,000 pound snowcat—an industrial snow remover—outside his home in Lake Tahoe where he was celebrating New Year with his extended family. As he writes in his book, My Next Breath (which has become a New York Times bestseller since its release in April), he was crushed by the six sets of wheels on the machine, covered by a corrugated track of 76 steel, teardrop-shaped ridges, each sharp end of which takes its turn to dig into his body. Skull, jaw, cheekbones, lungs, eye sockets, cranium, pelvis, arms, legs, skin—all were crushed by 14,000 pounds of machine, he writes.
The damage was extensive: 38 broken bones, a collapsed lung and the liver pierced by one of his broken ribs. But what is interesting is how Renner describes his near-death experience 30 minutes after he was lying on the ice with his heart rate slowing down. He says he died and felt a constantly connected, beautiful and fantastic energy. “There was no time, place, or space, and nothing to see, except a kind of electric, two-way vision made from strands of that inconceivable energy, like the whipping lines of cars’ tail-lights photographed by a time-lapse camera,” he writes.
In a Zoom interview with THE WEEK, I asked him whether he has ever felt that energy since. “No,” he says. “But I hold the feeling; it’s something that lives inside of me, the memory of it.” The closest experience he had to this was when his daughter Ava was born and the world stopped when she took her first breath holding Renner’s finger. “I thought if I do right by her as a father, we’d be in that same situation as I took my last breath,” he says.
In fact his daughter, who was nine at the time of the accident, played a huge role in his recovery. Ava, born from his 10-month marriage to Canadian actor Sonni Pacheco, became his biggest motivator as he showed her every week how much he had improved since the last one. It was a long journey though. Just being able to sit up in bed felt like an achievement. When he came home 12 days after the incident, his body was titanium-filled, “contusions, staples and bones scattered all around”.
“When I first got home, I had two plastic suitcases for my lungs, dispelling all this goop,” he said in a podcast. “It was brutal.”
But he never once thought of quitting. Right from his childhood as the oldest of seven children, he has always been a fighter. He was born in California to bowling alley managers, but his parents divorced when he was eight. He describes himself as being a self-sufficient and tenacious child. Throughout his life, he excelled at whatever he was interested in. And he always had the backing of parents who encouraged and disciplined him in equal measure. He remembers how one day, he got into a fight with his younger sister Kym. When he slapped her, his mother Valerie grounded him. “Go to your room and stay there,” she said. Then she forgot about it. It was during dinner when Kym reminded her that she realised that Renner was still in his room.
His confidence grew from being part of a loving and close-knit family. In fact, he credits a Lamaze class he went to with his mother at age 12 or 13 with helping him control pain during his accident through “explicit, deeply considered breathing”. Maybe it is ironic that his social media profile now contains a photo of him working out with his mother as part of his recovery, almost like life has come full circle.
Renner is in a good place today, after the release of the third season of his political thriller, Mayor of Kingstown, in which he plays the mayor Mike McLusky. He will also be part of the ensemble cast in the third instalment of the Knives Out film series. But his primary focus has shifted to his non-profit organisation, the RennerVation Foundation, which works with at-risk youth and children. “We hold summer camps and other activities to create opportunities for these kids who really don’t have anything,” he says. “We have worked with children in Rajasthan, too. Children are the future of our planet and I love them.”
Amazingly, he says he would change nothing about his life, including the accident, because every event has conspired to lead him to this phase of his life, when he is enjoying immense peace and love and has learned to cut out the “white noise”. He has so much more clarity now, he says. Everything he does today is purposeful, without the distractions that dominated his decision-making earlier. “A lot of times you can give credence to things that are unnecessary,” he says. “This is so even in the case of my career. I don’t value it above what is important to me, which are my family and shared experiences with my loved ones and friends. Does my career still have value? Sure it does. But it is much lower in priority.”