Jeremy Renner has opened up about the terrifying moment he says he died after being crushed by a 14,000-pound snowplow — and the electrifying vision he witnessed during the ordeal.
The Marvel and Avengers star, now 54, recounts the harrowing experience in brutal detail in his new memoir My Next Breath, which hit shelves today.
On New Year’s Day 2023, Renner was at his home in the Sierra Nevada mountains when he was struck by his own massive snowplow while trying to save his then-27-year-old nephew, Alex, from being crushed.
"Six f**king wheels, seventy-six steel blades, 14,000 pounds of machine, all ranged against one human body," Renner wrote.
In a split second, the 14,000-pound plow mowed him down, leaving him with catastrophic injuries: over 30 broken bones, 14 shattered ribs, a spinal fracture, a broken tibia, a punctured lung, a sliced liver, a broken and dislocated collarbone, and a major head laceration.
"I hear all the bones crack... skull, jaw, cheekbones, molars: fibula, tibia, lungs, eye sockets, cranium, pelvis, ulna, legs, arms, skin, crack, snap, crack, squeeze," Renner described.
But even with his body a crumpled mess, Renner said he didn’t immediately grasp how badly he was hurt.
"I had no full sense then what a hot mess my body was in," he admitted. "The truth was that my collapsed rib cage and my broken and dislocated shoulder and collarbone had worked to compress my lung to the point of suffocation."
One of his most gruesome injuries was when his left eyeball “violently burst out of my skull” after the orbital bone surrounding his eye socket shattered. "I could see my left eye with my right eye," Renner wrote.
Making matters worse, he was losing blood fast — six quarts — while battling the killing cold of Reno's freezing January temperatures.
"With the temperatures that morning hovering around freezing," he wrote, "and my body in shock, stuck on an icy driveway, the killing cold began to dangerously bite."
After around half an hour lying paralysed on the ice and manually breathing — "an effort akin to doing 10 or 20 push-ups per minute for half an hour," he said — Renner reached a breaking point.
"As I lay on the ice, my heart rate slowed, and right there, on that New Year’s Day, unknown to my daughter, my sisters, my friends, my father, my mother, I just got tired," Renner recalled.
"That’s when I died. I died, right there on the driveway to my house."
Renner says both his nephew and a neighbour saw him turn a "grey-green colour" before he lost consciousness. When emergency responders arrived, they confirmed his worst fear.
"I know I died - in fact, I’m sure of it," he wrote. "When the EMTs arrived, they noted that my heart had bottomed out at 18, and 18 beats per minute, you’re basically dead."
An out-of-body experience
But what Renner experienced in those moments went far beyond pain or fear.
"When I died, what I felt was energy, a constantly connected, beautiful and fantastic energy," he described. "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."
"I could see my lifetime. I could see everything all at once. In death there was no time, no time at all, yet it was also all time and forever."
He added: "It could have been for ten seconds; could have been for five minutes."
Ultimately, something urged him not to let go — and he came back.
A brutal road to recovery
Renner’s nightmare didn’t end once he made it to hospital. He was airlifted to Reno and underwent several surgeries — the first note he tapped out to family on his phone was a plea for them to let him go if his quality of life was too diminished.
"If I get to a point where I have to live on a machine or serious pain drugs to continue, I choose NOT to continue a dishonest life. I have lived all I wanted to live."
After six days, he was transferred to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles for even more surgeries.
"Everything was pinned," Renner wrote. "My body titanium-filled, contusions and staples and bones still shattered all over my body."
But his iron will wouldn’t allow him to stay down for long. The first thing he did after arriving home? He had a glass of red wine — and immediately threw himself into a brutal rehab program.
"We would use balls and bands, rollers, an anti-gravity treadmill, Normatec compression sleeves, you name it," he said.
By April — just four months later — he was strong enough to visit Six Flags amusement park and ride a roller coaster.
No regrets
Despite the unimaginable pain and the brush with death, Renner insists he wouldn’t change a thing.
"I had to do something," he wrote. "In those lightning-fast seconds, his [Alex’s] life hung in the balance. If that machine was to hit him, it would have crushed him to death, no question."
Today, Renner calls his survival a "glory moment" and sees every New Year as a celebration of life — and of the love that pulled him back from the brink.
"I didn’t f***ing die. So the celebration of New Year becomes a recognition of the depth of the love in our family."
My Next Breath is available now.
Featured image credit: Instagram/JeremyRenner