Jeremy Renner admits that he lacks the energy for demanding roles after his accident

Jeremy Renner recently revealed in an interview on the SmartLess podcast that he lacks the energy and mental capacity to take on demanding acting roles while he continues to recover from his serious snow plowing accident. Renner, who was hospitalized in January 2023 for blunt chest trauma and orthopedic injuries after being run over by his 14,000-pound Sno-Cat, shared his struggles with hosts Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes.

“I just don’t have the energy. I don’t have the fuel,” Renner said, explaining the enormous effort he has to put into his daily recovery. “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 it takes a lot of time to come right here every day just so I can have a positive thought, so I can make progress and keep growing.”

Renner returned to acting in January of this year for the third season of Mayor of Kingstown, but admitted he was “very scared” to go back to work. “Because I’m supposed to do, like, 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 said. “It was a big challenge. It was a big, big challenge for me to get over that hurdle.”

Renner mentioned that while he would have been able to pull off the role of Mike McLusky in Mayor of Kingstown because of his familiarity with the character, a more challenging role would have been impossible at that time. “But if it had been a very challenging role, I wouldn’t have been able to take it. Not challenging in that sense – because the show is challenging – but it would be like having to play Dahmer or something, something that is so far removed from me.”

Renner will appear in Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, his first film since the accident. The film features an all-star cast including Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Glenn Close, Josh O’Connor, Cailee Spaeny and Daniel Craig, who reprises his role as detective Benoit Blanc.