Jeremy Renner is opening up about his terrifying accident. The 53-year-old actor recently appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show, and recalled being crushed by a snowplow back in January 2023.
"To me, it felt like maybe I just got the wind knocked out of me, but I did break 38 bones, my eye came out of my head, [I] crushed my skull. It was pretty terrible," Renner admitted. "[I] got through it, so that's really all that matters at the end of the day."
Getting through it wasn't easy, though, a fact that was initially "hidden" from Ava Berlin Renner, the 11-year-old daughter the actor shares with his ex, Sonni Pacheco.
"The initial 14 days, it was a lot of life support. I wasn't kind of supposed to make it," Renner said. "She was hidden from all of that. I even forgot about my daughter. That's how messed up I was after the accident."
When he got home from the hospital and was told that his daughter was there to see him, Renner said "that's when it all kicked in for me."
"That's when my life support really kicked in, because my daughter is my life force," he said. "It's everything. I saw the fear in my daughter's face for the first time. That's when I was looking in a mirror, like, 'Ah, I must look pretty terrible.' I was a hot mess."
"The reality of what transpired really set in, what I'd done to my daughter, what I actually did to my nephew, my whole family, that really set in," Renner continued. "I asked her to wait for me. I said, 'These are just 38 broken bones, darling, and they're all going to heal. I promise, if you wait for me, I will be better, I will be faster, I will be stronger than you've ever seen before. I promise. You have to wait for me.'"
It's a sentiment Renner later expressed through music. On the one-year anniversary of his accident, Renner released his first single, titled "Wait," off of his EP, Love and Titanium.
"Reason number one for my recovery is her. I asked her to 'wait for me' when I first saw her January 14 as I arrived home. As I got better, she got better, less afraid," Renner wrote on Instagram at the time. "There is simply no better motivator to recover than to heal your family and friends."
During his talk show appearance, Renner said that healing through music was "very cathartic" for himself and his family.
"My daughter plays piano [and I wanted to] get her involved in the process, turn it into something positive," he said. "That's what I've always been trying to do since the accident. Music was a great outlet."
Jeremy Renner steps out with his daughter, Ava.
In a recent interview with ET, Renner opened up about another aspect of his recovery -- getting back to work. Renner returned to the set of Mayor of Kingstown in January 2024, despite being worried that he wouldn't be able to do "basic duties" of his job.
"It was something unlike I really felt before. I was in a place of self-doubt," the Hawkeye star said. "It's 12 hours, 14 hours on a set. Whether you're doing stunts or not, it's exhausting."
With the help of the cast and crew, Renner was able to "figure it out" and even insert some of his real-life emotion into his portrayal of his character.
"I inserted a lot of what I was feeling into that moment," Renner said, adding that his character, Mike McLusky, has "a bit more delicacy to him this season because of [being] forced to be informed by my condition."
Season 3 of Mayor of Kingstown -- which also stars Dianne Wiest, Hugh Dylan, Emma Laird and Kyle Chandler -- will hit Paramount+ on June 2.
RELATED CONTENT:
