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Jeremy Renner is opening up in raw, unfiltered terms about the snowplow accident that nearly ended his life—and how the aftermath changed him at the core.
In a candid conversation on Kelly Ripa’s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast, the Hawkeye actor revisited the traumatic 2023 incident that left him with critical injuries. Speaking about the moment he flatlined, Renner described the experience not with fear, but with unexpected serenity.
“It’s a great relief is all I can say,” Renner revealed. “It’s a wonderful, wonderful relief to be removed from your body. It is the most exhilarating peace you could ever feel.” He went further, calling it “magical”—a sensation of being free from physical constraints, where only the essence of his spirit remained. “You don’t see anything but what’s in your mind’s eye. Like, you’re the atoms of who you are, the DNA, your spirit. It’s the highest adrenaline rush, but the peace that comes with it, it’s magnificent.”
But that peace was abruptly shattered when he was revived. “I didn’t want to come back,” Renner admitted. “I remember, and I was brought back and I was so pissed off. I came back, I’m like, ‘Aww!’” The actor described the moment of returning to consciousness as disorienting and painful. “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.’”
Despite the pain and trauma, Renner says the experience has given him unshakable clarity. “It makes me — a man that didn’t want to come back — really be able to be back here and live it on my terms as the captain of my own ship,” he said. “And get on it or off it, I don’t give a f***. I’m going to live life on my own terms and for nobody else. [It’s] very clear. The white noise is ripped away.”
Renner’s words are a striking reflection on mortality, rebirth, and reclaiming one’s life with purpose. The near-death moment may have almost ended everything, but for Renner, it became the beginning of something far more powerful: a life with no apologies, and no compromises.
