Mayor of Kingstown star Jeremy Renner has opened up about his horrific snowplow accident in his first interview since the incident that left him hospitalized with 30 broken bones and a collapsed lung.
Speaking on ABC News in an interview with Diane Sawyer, Renner recalled how he and his nephew were towing a pickup truck with the snowplow when the incident happened. The Hawkeye actor was operating the plow but left the vehicle to check on his nephew and fell, with the plow barreling into him.
“I was awake through every moment,” Renner said. “It’s exactly like you imagined it would feel like, it’s hard to imagine what that feels like, but if you look at the machine and I was on asphalt and ice. I wish I was on snow… Felt like someone took the wind out of you. Too many things are going on in the body to feel; pain is everything; it’s like if your soul could have pain.”
The interview also included an animation showing exactly how the accident happened. You can check out some of the images below.
ABC
ABC
ABC
Renner’s injuries were so severe that he wasn’t sure if he would survive and even considered end-of-life decisions with his family. “Don’t let me live on tubes on a machine,” the actor remembered saying to his family. “If my existence is going to be on drugs and painkillers, let me go now.”
It wasn’t just Renner who thought he was going to die; his neighbor, Barb Fletcher, also said she thought he was going to pass away in her arms.
“At one point, I was holding his head — I wouldn’t take my eyes off of him because I didn’t want him to drift off,” Fletcher told Sawyer. “And at one point, he just got a clammy feel to him, and he turned this gray-green color. And I feel in my heart like I lost him for a second. He closed his eyes. I really do feel like he passed away for a few seconds.”
ABC News
While Renner recovered in the hospital, he was surrounded by several loved ones, including his Avengers co-star Anthony Mackie, who Renner revealed “was there at my bedside.”
His mother, Valerie, also stayed close by, evening reading to him in the style of Dr. Seuss.
“Oh, Jesus,” Renner said with a laugh. “So she’s reading Stephen King — some, like, horror thing. But she just wants to read like she’s reading Dr. Seuss to me, like, ‘How now, brown cow? ‘”
“It just happened to be what I was reading at the time, but I just wanted him to hear my voice,” Valerie explained.
ABC
Renner also recalled what his daughter, Ava, told him after the incident. “She didn’t have to say anything,” he said. “She said she’s scared. She said she loved me.”
The Oscar-nominated actor is now back home and recovering. Earlier this week, he shared a video on Instagram of himself walking with a cane alongside his daughter.
Jeremy Renner Instagram
Dr. Ron Daniels, an intensive care doctor from the UK, recently told DailyMail.com that Renner’s recovery could be “anything from full recovery to life-changing after-effects from his injuries.”
“He will suffer psychologically as well as physically and require support and rehabilitation for a period of many months after his injury to recover his full function,” he said. “Almost certainly, he will have a degree of pain and stiffness in the broken limbs, and chest wall stiffness following the chest trauma.”