Jeremy Renner is opening up about the freak accident that nearly claimed his life. In his memoir, My Next Breath, the Avengers star details the horrific moment he was crushed by a 14,000-pound snowplow in 2023. The 54-year-old held himself accountable for the accident, which left him with catastrophic injuries, after he tried to prevent the machine from sliding toward his nephew.
“I could see my lifetime. I could see everything all at once. It could have been for ten seconds; could have been for five minutes,” Renner writes in his book released on Tuesday, per Page Six. “I know I died … When the EMTs arrived, they noted that my heart had bottomed out at 18, and 18 beats per minute, you’re basically dead.”
“Six f–king wheels, seventy-six steel blades, 14,000 pounds of machine, all ranged against one human body,” the Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation star adds. “I hear all the bones crack … Skull, jaw, cheekbones, molars: fibula, tibia, lungs, eye sockets, cranium, pelvis, ulna, legs, arms, skin, crack, snap, crack, squeeze.”
Renner suffered 14 broken ribs, a spinal fracture, a punctured lung and a sliced liver among other grave injuries. “I had no full sense then what a hot mess my body was in,” he says, recalling the moment he lay in the snow covered with his blood. “I could see my left eye with my right eye,” the veteran actor writes, referencing the fact that his left eye “violently burst out of [his] skull.”
The American Hustle star admits that the accident was a “tiny” but “monumental” mistake on his part, as he recalls forgetting to set the parking brake on the snowplow. Although the accident went on to “change the course of my life forever,” Renner has no regrets about saving his nephew. “I had to do something,” he writes. “In those lightning-fast seconds, his life hung in the balance. If that machine was to hit him, it would have crushed him to death, no question.”
