Jeremy Renner recalled the moment he saw his own eyeball during the accident when he was run over by a snowplow.
The actor, who played the superhero Hawkeye in six different Marvel movies and TV shows, was hospitalized in January 2023 after an accident on his property in Reno, Nevada. He had used the vehicle to tow his nephew’s truck but got caught under the tracks when it slid sideways.
In the 911 call obtained by Business Insider, his neighbor said at the time: “Someone’s in front of my house on the ground. He got run over by a snowcat. He’s been crushed!” The actor later underwent surgery for “blunt chest trauma.”
Despite being severely injured, Renner recovered and has been able to continue with his career. Three months after his hospitalization, the actor promoted his Disney+ series, “Rennervations.” He told ABC’s Diane Sawyer last April that he believes his mindset helped him to recover: “I know I’m mentally strong. I get that from my mom.”
Matt Winkelmeyer/GA/THR/Getty Images
Renner started filming “The Mayor of Kingstown” season three in January 2024, one year after the accident. When promoting the series on Wednesday’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” Renner recalled the incident.
“I jumped back on it, or tried to, and got caught up in the tracks, and it broke 38 bones, and it was brutal, dude. It was brutal,” he said.
He went on: “Half my face is metal. All the right side of my back is metal. The ribs, yeah. There was 14 breaks in the ribs. And you see your eye, with your other eye, because my eyeball was out.”
Despite his horrific injuries, Renner said that he chose not to think about them at the time.
“So you just have weird things go through your head. It’s like, ‘Well, I guess that’s real, but I’ll worry about that later,’ he explained. And I look at my legs. They were all twisted up, and ‘I’ll worry about that later’ because I got to worry about breathing first, right?”
When Fallon asked if he panicked during the accident, he said: “You can’t. You die then.”
Renner added that his injuries have given him a more positive outlook on life. He said: “I won’t have a bad day for the rest of my life. It’s impossible, right?”
