Jeremy Renner has no “energy” for “challenging” roles after his accident

After his near-fatal snow plowing accident, Jeremy Renner’s top priority is his recovery.

When appearing on the Smartless Podcast on Monday, June 24th, the Mayor of Kingstown The 53-year-old star admitted that he currently “doesn’t have the energy” to throw himself into demanding or “challenging” roles as he continues to focus on his recovery.

“I just don’t have the energy. I don’t have the fuel,” Renner admitted. “I have to put so much fuel into this reality, into this body, into all this stuff. I can’t just pretend right now. Because that takes a lot of time, to come right here every day just so I can have a positive thought, so I can make progress, so I can keep growing.”

On 1 January 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 estimated 3-foot snowfall the night before. He suffered 38 broken bones, a collapsed lung and significant chest trauma.

Now that he’s largely recovered from the accident, Renner revealed how the experience helped him appreciate the present moment and how he learned to accept “divine intervention.” Although he has a new outlook on life, he admitted he was “very scared” to be in front of the camera again.

“Because I’m supposed to fucking do fiction? I’m still trying to live in reality, I’m trying to live. So it was a difficult boundary for me to cross,” he explained. “It was a big challenge. It was a big, big challenge for me to get over that hurdle.”

“I still struggle with it sometimes because I don’t take it that seriously. I’m playing a role that I can play very well and I know the show very well, so it was easy for me to slip back into it,” Renner said of his return to acting with season 3 of Mayor of Kingstown. “But if it had been a very demanding role, I wouldn’t have been able to take it. Not challenging in that sense – because the show is demanding – but it would be like having to play Dahmer or something, something that is so far removed from me.”

Renner previously spoke about the challenges he faced during his recovery and how he has since discovered some unexpected limitations in his physical abilities. In May, the actor told Los Angeles Times that he was just learning to walk again while filming the latest season of the Disney+ show.

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When he got in front of the camera, he recalled falling asleep during filming his first week. “They said, ‘And action!’ And I was out,” he said. “We realized they were making me work too hard, too many hours, too many days in a row. What I am ready to do is everything, but what I am capable doing is something else.”

“You have to treat me like I’m a child actor,” Renner explained. “The mayor of Kingstown is now like a 14-year-old.”