Jeremy Renner ‘terrified’ to return to acting after snowplough accident

Jeremy Renner doesn’t “have the energy” to take on challenging roles after his near fatal snowplough accident 18 months ago, saying he is “very terrified” to act again.

Speaking on the Smartless podcast, which is hosted by actors Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes, the Oscar-nominated actor said he was finding acting harder than he did before January 2023, when he was hospitalised in critical condition after his own Sno-Cat ran him over while he was clearing snow from the roads near his home in Nevada.

“I just don’t have the energy for it. I don’t have the fuel,” Renner said. “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. Because that 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.”

Renner is best known for his roles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Mission Impossible films, as well as his Oscar-nominated turn in The Hurt Locker.

After a year of rehabilitation, which included healing more than 30 broken bones and learning to walk unassisted again, Renner returned to acting in January this year, to film the third season of his drama Mayor of Kingstown.

Of returning to acting, the 53-year-old told Arnett, Bateman and Hayes, “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.”

“I still struggle with it sometimes … I don’t take it super seriously. 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,” Renner said, of stepping back into his role as Mike McLusky in Mayor of Kingstown. “But if it was a very challenging role, I couldn’t have taken it. Not challenging in the sense that – because the show’s challenging, but it’s if I had to go play Dahmer or something, something so far from me.”

Renner is next set to star alongside Daniel Craig in Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man, which will be his first film role since the accident. Renner joins Johnson’s whodunit franchise with Andrew Scott, Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Josh Brolin, Josh O’Connor and Cailee Spaeny.