Jeremy Renner has shared details of the split-second mistake he made that resulted in his 2023 snowplough accident, which left him with severe injuries.
The Hawkeye star, 54, had gone out to help clear snow from his neighbours’ driveways in January 2023 when he lost control of the 14,000-pound PistenBully snowcat. As he tried to jump back in and regain control of it, he got caught up in the tracks and pulled under.
He was airlifted to the hospital where he underwent several surgeries to treat his injuries, which included 38 broken bones and a dislodged eyeball.
In an extract published in The Times from his forthcoming memoir, My Next Breath, the actor said he had to act instinctively to save his nephew when realising that the huge vehicle was in danger of crushing him.
Renner wrote: “We were working on the long, winding driveway that climbs to an expansive parking area in front of my house. I was in the cab of the snowcat, and Alex was on the ground attaching the Ford truck to the back of the snowcat with chains.
“We started pulling the truck out of the snow and got it unstuck. Alex went to unlatch it from the snowcat as I started to turn the snowcat around. But its snowblade was up high and I couldn’t quite see Alex, who was somewhere in front of me. I got out of the driver’s seat and stepped on the tracks to talk to him.
“‘Before exiting the driver’s cab! — Apply parking brake,’ the manual says. But I didn’t engage the parking brake, or disengage the steel tracks. In that moment — an innocent, critical, life-changing moment — that tiny but monumental slip of the mind would change the course of my life forever.”
Renner said that as the snowcat began to slide on the ice-covered tarmac towards his nephew, he realised he was in danger of being crushed. He had one chance: to jump up and across the snowcat’s metal tracks to get back into the cab, where he would be able to hit the “stop” button.
Reflecting on the decision, Renner said it was in fact an “impossible” feat to attempt: “To jump across three feet of spinning tracks as the machine slid forward, up into a cab where my only option was to slam my fist into a red STOP button. My feet lost their grip on the moving tracks, and I never made it to the cab.”
Renner was catapulted from the spinning metal tracks and onto the ice, where his head hit the ground and split open. He then recalled the “terrible crunching sounds as 14,000lb of galvanised steel machinery slowly, inexorably, monotonously, ground over my body. It was a horrifying soundtrack.”
The Mission: Impossible actor went on to say that he heard his bones break, while his nephew thankfully escaped by the “slimmest of seconds”. He also thanked the paramedics that gave him life-saving care in Reno and then later at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.
Renner has made a slow return to acting, reprising his role in season three of Mayor of Kingstown just 12 months after the accident.
His next major role is in Wake Up Dead Man, the third instalment of the Knives Out franchise which will also star Daniel Craig, Cailee Spaeny, Josh Brolin, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close and Andrew Scott.
