Jeremy Renner reveals he was convinced he’ll die after near-fatal snowplow accident, “If my existence is going to be on drugs and painkillers, let me go now”

Jeremy Renner is gearing up for his first interview since his near-fatal snowplow accident. In the upcoming interview titled Jeremy Renner: The Diane Sawyer Interview – A Story of Terror, Survival and Triumph, the Marvel actor reflected on his injuries and revealed how he was convinced that he’ll die.

As The Hollywood Reporter shares, during the conversation with Sawyer, the actor also disclosed the extensive use of metal to reconstruct and strengthen his face and body following the harrowing New Year’s snowplow accident, which left him with more than 30 broken bones.

Renner sustained severe injuries after trying to prevent his nephew Alex Fries from getting run over by his 14,300-pound snowcat, which began to slide when the break was not properly set. Renner, who said he was awake for the entire painful experience, told Sawyer that he had “lost a lot of flesh and bone in this experience.”

He further shared that the injuries were so extensive that he was convinced he was going to die. “If I was there on my own, that would have been a horrible way to die, and surely I would have. Surely,” he said of his life-threatening injuries. “Surely, but I wasn’t alone. I was with my nephew, sweet Alex.”

In the conversation, Renner also contemplated end-of-life decisions with his family and initially prevented his daughter from seeing him immediately after the critical accident. “Don’t let me live on tubes on a machine. If my existence is going to be on drugs and painkillers, let me go now,” Renner said.

Renner’s neighbour Barb Fletcher, who was one of the first to come to his aid, also revealed, “At one point I was holding his head — I wouldn’t take my eyes off of him because I didn’t want him to drift off. And at one point, he just got a clammy feel to him and he turned this gray-green color. And I feel in my heart like I lost him for a second. He closed his eyes. I really do feel like he passed away for a few seconds.”

“It was the blood, the amount of blood, he was just in so much pain and the sounds that were coming out of him,” said Richard Kovatch, Fletcher’s partner. “There was so much blood in the snow, and then when I looked at his head it appeared to me to be cracked wide open, and I could see white. I don’t know if that was his skull, maybe it was just my imagination, but that’s what I thought I saw.”

As THR notes, Renner’s ribcage and face have been reconstructed with permanent metal plates, and one of his legs has titanium rods. His jaw is being held together with rubber bands and screws. “Jeremy in pain, wide awake. He was delirious, he was just miserable,” his sister, Kim Renner recalled of the time around the surgeries. “It hurt. He cried from misery just because he couldn’t sleep.”

“This whole side of my body, I don’t really feel sensitivity to touch, but it’ll grow. I can feel it, the change already in two months,” he said noting that he doesn’t have any sensation in his face, though his vision works fine. “I feel hardly any of my teeth on the upper part because they went inside my face to put in two plates because of an orbital crack.”

“They put screws in my skull and my jaw to hold it with rubber bands,” he added. “I’m learning to speak again.” Renner revealed that he’s still triggered by the harrowing incident and lost sleep over preparing for the interview. “I refuse to have that be a trauma and be a negative experience,” he said.

“That is a moment I’m proud of because I wouldn’t let that happen to my nephew. I shift the narrative of being victimized or making a mistake or anything else. I refused to be f***ing haunted by that memory in that way.”

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