Why Jeremy Renner Struggles With Acting After Snowplow Accident
By Movieguide® Contributor
Jeremy Renner has found it difficult to enter into acting roles and make-believe worlds after his snowplow accident because of how much energy it takes to simply exist in the real world.
“I just don’t have the energy for it. I don’t have the fuel,” Renner told the Smartless podcast. “I have so much fuel to put into this reality, this body, all this stuff. I can’t just go play make-believe right now. Because that takes a lot of time to get right here every day just so I can have a positive thought, so I can progress, so I can always keep growing.”
“I’m still trying to live in reality, I’m still trying to live,” he added. “So it was a hard line for me to cross. It was a big stretch. It was very, very challenging for me mentally to get over that hump.”
“I still struggle with it sometimes too, like, I don’t take it super seriously. I’m in a character that I can do very well and I know the show very well, so it was easy for me to kind of slide back into it,” Renner explained of Season 3 of MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN. “But if it was a very challenging role, I couldn’t have taken it. Not challenging in the sense that — because the show’s challenging, but it’s if I had to go play Dahmer or something, something so far from me.”
The grueling days of filming also took a toll on Renner physically, as he struggled to have the energy to perform for multiple hours a day. When he returned to Disney to film Season 2 of RENNERVATIONS, the actor would fall asleep between takes because he was so exhausted. They ended up rolling back his hours to that of a child actor to allow him to perform at a sustainable level.
All of these difficulties stem from a snowplow accident that occurred on New Year’s Day 2023, when Renner was run over by a 14,300 lb snowcat which he stepped in front of to save his adult nephew.
The incident resulted in over 30 broken bones, including a crushed sternum, which the actor not only survived but recovered from at a miraculous rate. Only months after the accident, Renner walked the red carpet for Season 1 of RENNERVATIONS and released an album later that year, chronicling the incident. He has fueled his recovery both by keeping busy as well as spending quality time with his daughter, Ava.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Nearly a year and a half after AVENGERS’ Jeremy Renner suffered a near-fatal snow plow accident, the actor is sharing the heartfelt conversation he had with his daughter Ava, 11, as he started his recovery process.
On THE KELLY CLARKSON SHOW, Renner revealed that once he got off life-support, his “life-support really kicked in because my daughter is my life force.”
Clarkson asked Renner, “How did your little girl deal with that?”
“I saw the fear on my daughter’s face for the first time,” the actor revealed. “The reality of what transpired really set in. What I had done to my daughter, what I actually did to my nephew, to my whole family, that really set in.
“So I asked her to wait for me. I said these are just 38 broken bones, darling. And they’re all going to heal,” he continued. “And I promise, if you wait for me, I’ll be better, I’ll be faster, I’ll be stronger than you’ve ever seen before. I promise. You have to wait for me.”
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