Jeremy Renner admits to struggle after accident: "I don't have the fuel"

Jeremy Renner was born on January 7, 1971, and reborn on January 1, 2023, the day a 6-ton snowplow ran over him and nearly took his life.

That day, the actor broke 38 of the 206 bones in an adult's body - that is, almost 20% of his bones. He was operated on several times and has gone through an ordeal of rehabilitation, physiotherapy, treatments, and more.

He appeared to face everything with a smile. In his social media posts, Jeremy Renner's spirits went through the roof.

The actor thought about getting back to work as soon as possible and returned to the third season of the Showtime series 'Mayor of Kingstown' in January 2024.

Photo: 'Mayor of Kingstown' / Showtime

However, after several positive and happy interviews, Jeremy Renner has opened up about the toll his accident has taken. On the 'Smartless' podcast, hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnet, he revealed how hard his reintegration into working life has been.

Photo: Smartless / Instagram

Jeremy Renner explained the enormous gap between his job and his real life. "Because I'm to do, like, f***** fiction? I'm still trying to live in reality, I'm trying to live. So it was a hard line for me to cross. It was a big stretch. It was very, very challenging for me mentally to get over that hump," he said.

He acknowledged that, from now on, he has to seriously study the nature of the roles he considers. Deciding to accept them is not as simple as it once was.

"I just don't have the energy for it. I don't have the fuel," he said on the Smartless podcast. "I have so much fuel to put into this reality, this body, all this stuff. I can't just go play make-believe right now."

Just living normally and optimistically is already tiresome enough for the actor. "It takes a lot of time to get right here every day just so I can have a positive thought, so I can progress, so I can always keep growing," he told his colleagues on the podcast.

You may point to 'Mayor of Kingstown' as 'proof' that Jeremy Renner is back in business. But nothing is further from the truth. "I still struggle with it sometimes too, like, I don't take it super seriously," he says about his role in the Showtime series. "I'm in a character that I can do very well and I know the show very well, so it was easy for me to kind of slide back into it.

Sliding back into a role he knew, with few physical challenges, that was okay for Jeremy Renner. "But if it was a very challenging role, I couldn’t have taken it," he said on the podcast. And there he gave the example of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, a role "so far from me."

When you look closer at the example he mentions, it turns out Jeremy Renner is not just talking about physically challenging roles but also about psychologically challenging ones. As his colleague Evan Peters admitted after shooting 'Dahmer - Monster' for Netflix, playing the serial killer really caused him mental health issues, Vanity Fair reports.

Image: 'Dahmer - Monster' / Netflix

But is Jeremy Renner saying his years as a Marvel superhero Hawkeye are also over?

For now, it seems like he's indicating that the action role will be too difficult for him. However, in time, the actor himself will decide the path to take in his career.

Image: 'Hawkeye' / Disney

Despite his admissions of hardship, Jeremy Renner still had quite a busy agenda. Besides 'Mayor of Kingstown,' he is also expected to join the spectacular cast in the 'Knives Out' franchise.

'Knives Out', the mystery movie with star-studded ensemble casts, has its long-awaited third installment coming up. It's called 'Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery' (a title referring to a U2 song) and it's set to appear in 2025.

Image: Netflix

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