Jeremy Renner has shared details of the split-second mistake he made which caused a freak snowplough accident in 2023 which left him with severe injuries.
In January 2023, the Hawkeye star, 54, was clearing snow from his neighbours’ driveways 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, including the 38 bones he broke 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 writes: “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.
“The snowcat began to slide on the icy asphalt towards Alex. He was crouching in front of me and I realised with horror that he was in danger. The menacing ’cat inched towards him. He was doomed to be crushed between the snowblade and my truck, which was perpendicular to the snowcat only 10 or 12 feet away.
“Time slowed to a near stop. I heard the cracking of the ice under the tracks of the snowcat, the lumbering torque of the engine. Somehow, I had to stop it. I had one shot — a leap up and across the snowcat’s metal tracks back into the cab, where hopefully I could hit the stop button. “Not today, motherf***er,” I shouted. I made the leap.
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“In retrospect, it’s an impossible thing to have attempted — 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.
“I lurched violently forward, out of control. In that split second, I was catapulted off the spinning metal tracks, arms flailing. I arced over the front of the tracks, propelled forward, down on to the hard-packed ice, where my head hit the ground hard and instantly gashed open.
“There came 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 goes on to say that he heard his bones break and thankfully his nephew escaped by the “slimmest of seconds”. He also thanks 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.
