Jeremy Renner reflects on returning to acting after snowplow accident; not yet ready for “challenging roles”

Jeremy Renner may have stepped in front of the camera, but the Hawkeye star isn’t so sure about his recovery yet. During an appearance on the Smartless podcast on Monday, June 24, Renner, 53, who survived a near-fatal snow plowing accident last year, admitted he doesn’t have the energy to take on “challenging roles” because his health remains his top priority.

“I just don’t have the energy for it. I don’t have enough fuel,” the “Mayor of Kingstown” actor admitted. “I have so much fuel to put into this reality, this body, all this stuff. I can’t just pretend right now,” he added.

Jeremy Renner tells how he was able to bring himself to get back in front of the camera

On January 1, 2023, the Hawkeye star was involved in a horrific accident when he was run over by a 14,000-pound snow plow while helping a family member pull a stuck vehicle out of the previous night’s estimated 3 feet of snow. The actor suffered 38 broken bones, a condensed lung, and significant chest trauma as a result of the accident.

Now that Renner is doing better—which is nothing short of a miracle—he revealed how the near-death experience helped him appreciate the present more and how he learned to accept “divine intervention.”

Renner admitted that he was “very scared” to step in front of the camera within a year of the accident. “Because, like, am I supposed to do fiction, for fuck’s sake? I’m still trying to live in reality, I’m trying to live. So it was a hard line for me to cross,” he noted on the aforementioned podcast. Renner added that being back on set was definitely a big challenge for him. He expressed that it was a big challenge for him to get over that hurdle mentally.

Jeremy Renner on his return to filming the third season of Mayor of Kingstown

Renner said he still struggles with it sometimes, but because he knows the character well and knows the show like the back of his hand, it was easy for him to slip back into it. However, if it had been a very demanding role like playing Dahmar or something that was so far removed from him, he wouldn’t have been able to handle it, Renner said.

The Avengers actor spoke to the Los Angeles Times in May about his limited physical abilities following his accident, saying at the time that he was just learning to walk again while filming the latest season of the Disney+ show.

Renner recalled falling asleep during filming his first week back. “They said, ‘And action!’ And I was gone,” he said. The actor explained that he and the production team realized they had pushed him too hard for too many hours and too many days in a row, and that while he was ready to give it his all on set, his body was capable of something completely different.

“You must be treating me like I’m a child actor,” Renner remarked. “The mayor of Kingstown is now like a 14-year-old boy.”

The show in question premiered on June 2 on ParamountPlus.