Jeremy Renner recalls skull fracture in near-fatal snowplow accident

• Jeremy Renner was hospitalized on January 1, 2023, after being hit by a 6.5-ton snow plow.
• The actor was in intensive care for 12 days with more than 38 broken bones
• He describes the traumatic accident and the recovery in Men’s Health July/August issue

Jeremy Renner tells the harrowing details of his near-fatal accident last year.

In a new interview with Men’s Health for the July/August issue of the magazine, which Mayor of Kingstown The 53-year-old star recounted the moment he was hit by a 6,400-kilogram snow plow in Reno, Nevada, on January 1, 2023, and was hospitalized for 12 days.

“It rocks because there are four tire sections with these metal tracks – it’s pulling it like a tank. I remember every bump,” he told the outlet, recalling the horrific crash. “I remember my head slamming into the thing and it just pressing down on me – it’s exactly how you’d imagine it to be. An immovable object and a crushing force, and something has to give.”

“But thank God my skull didn’t give way completely,” he said. “And then I carried on.” Wavy, wavy, wavy, wavy. My cheekbone broke, my eye socket broke, and then my eyes bulged out from the crushing I had suffered from the machine. I could see my left eyeball with my right eyeball. I was screaming for air.”

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Renner said he tried hard to breathe, but he just couldn’t.

“I couldn’t breathe,” he said. “It’s hard to use your abdominal muscles when you have 14 broken ribs and a punctured lung. I didn’t know that at the time – I just had to take a breath. I went through my body’s checklist and tried to make sense of it all.”

“The first five minutes were all about my breathing… I got really tired. My heart rate kept dropping. Hoooohohh, hoooohohhjust this exhausting breathing for 45 minutes,” he explained. “But despite the exhaustion, I almost felt calm. The paramedics came and I thoughtI must give them my body, because I am cooked. I’m not getting up. These aren’t just cramps. I’m not going down the driveway to see my family.”

The actor kept telling himself to “focus on breathing” until paramedics were able to save him. Although the hours and days that followed are mostly a blur, Renner said he remembers being on a helicopter ride and hearing the words “life support.” He spent 12 days in intensive care, calling it “a damn disaster.”

“Showering, going to the toilet – everything was a disaster,” he said.Whooooooooo! They give you medicine so you don’t have to go to the bathroom and you get constipated. And you pee in a jar. It was awful. That’s when you know things aren’t going well – you’re peeing in a plastic jug. It took me 17 minutes to get out of bed. Sometimes I was happy to sit up and squeeze into a chair and move around a bit. But a shower – everything took about half a day. I couldn’t get anything wet. Your hair gets super greasy and gross and you stink, but I had all these clips that I couldn’t get wet and I didn’t want to risk any fucking infection. So I sponged myself.”

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In the accident, Renner suffered more than 38 broken bones, including fractures to his ribs, knees, ankles, pelvis, face and hands. He also suffered a collapsed lung, a perforated liver and a severe laceration to his head.

But the avenger The star maintained a positive attitude, which played a major role in his lengthy recovery. “I’ve got to get better than I was today. That’s all that f***ing matters. I’m not setting high standards here,” he told the outlet.

His mantra since the accident: “The only thing we can control in our lives is our perspective.”

Renner is now on the mend and has shared his recovery journey on social media. In October 2023, he also told CNN that he felt “very blessed and very lucky to be standing up and walking around and living life,” more than nine months after the incident.

“I’m very clear. My life is really lean, if that makes sense,” he said. “There’s no fat left in my life. I don’t have time for that. So it’s a really beautiful thing to have that superpower.”