Jeremy Renner was lucky to escape with his life after a horrifying snowplow incident, and a simulation has shown how it happened.
This article contains graphic imagery and descriptions of horrific injuries.On New Year’s Day 2023, the 54-year-old Marvel star was at his Lake Tahoe home when a freak accident with his Pistenbully snowplow left him with more than 30 broken bones, severe blood loss totaling six quarts, and a dangerous drop in body temperature from hypothermia.
According to a Nevada sheriff’s office report, Renner had been trying to stop the massive snowplow from sliding toward his nephew.
“When Renner attempted to stop or divert the Pistenbully to avoid injury to (his nephew), he was pulled under the vehicle by the track and run over,” the report stated.
“The Pistenbully rolled over him and continued down the road… He laid on the ground and focused on his breathing while (his nephew and others) rendered aid to him until medical personnel arrived on scene.”
In his memoir My Next Breath, Renner recalls the exact, chilling moment his life slipped away. “I died, right there on the driveway to my house,” he wrote.
“Though I’d broken more than 30 bones and lost six quarts of blood… an even greater danger to me as the minutes dragged by on the ice was hypothermia. I know I died — in fact, I’m sure of it.”
But how did Renner get so lucky? Well, simulation expert Zack D. Films has shown us how.
"The machine started rolling straight towards his nephew," the video begins. "So he climbed onto the moving track, trying to get to the cab, but it quickly pulled him under."
The simulation gets quite graphic, noting that Renner's ribs "snapped like twigs, puncturing a lung."
The video shows Renner's head then hitting the ice, and his eyeball popping out of his socket.
"Bone shards tore his liver," it continues. "And his ankle shattered beneath the steel."
It shows that Renner was airlifted in "critical condition," and that the actor was "convinced that he was going to die."
Metal rods and screws then stabilised Renner's shattered leg, "while plates and wires rebuilt his jaw and eye socket."
Despite Renner being in a critical condition for weeks, just a year later, he was back on a movie set.
Despite this sounding like an incredibly traumatic, painful experience, Renner has said the opposite.
“When I died, what I felt was energy, a constantly connected, beautiful and fantastic energy,” he wrote. “There was no time, place, or space, and nothing to see, except a kind of electric, two-way vision made from strands of that inconceivable energy.”
Speaking to Kelly Ripa on SiriusXM’s Let’s Talk Off Camera, the Hawkeye star explained: “It’s a great relief, is all I can say. It’s a wonderful relief to be removed from your body. It is the most exhilarating peace you could ever feel… It’s the highest adrenaline rush. But the peace that comes with it — it’s magnificent. It’s so magical.”
However, when he was brought back, Renner’s reaction wasn’t gratitude — it was annoyance.
“I didn’t want to come back. I remember, and I was brought back and I was so pissed off,” he admitted.
“I came back and I saw the eyeball again. I’m like, oh, s***. I’m back. Saw my legs. I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s gonna hurt later.’ I’m like, all right, let me continue to breathe.”