Jeremy Renner isn’t sugar-coating the trauma he endured on New Year’s Day 2023. The Avengers actor, known for his role as Hawkeye, has opened up about the harrowing accident that nearly took his life when a 14,330-pound snowcat crushed him outside his Lake Tahoe home.
In his memoir My Next Breath, Renner speaks candidly about the terrifying moment he “died” and the physical and emotional aftermath of surviving an ordeal that left him with dozens of broken bones and a new outlook on life.
It all started with a simple act of trying to help his nephew, Alexander Fries, on that cold holiday morning. But when Renner noticed the snowplough rolling toward him, his quick reaction to stop the machine turned into a life-altering mistake. He slipped, landed directly in its path, and in his words, the machine “slowly, inexorably, monotonously” rolled over his body. What followed was a brutal fight to stay alive.
Inside The Moment Renner Believes He Died
Renner recalls lying on the ice for nearly half an hour, his heart rate slowing as his injuries piled up.
“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,” he writes.
Despite suffering more than 30 broken bones, a collapsed lung, and six quarts of blood loss, it was hypothermia creeping in that added to the danger.
“After about 30 minutes on the ice, of breathing manually for so long… that’s when I died,” Renner shares.
WOW- Jeremy Renner discusses what it was like during his near death experience pic.twitter.com/xwG5Difnpe
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Emergency responders later confirmed his heart rate had plummeted to 18 beats per minute. He described an out-of-body experience, a sensation of boundless energy and timelessness that he says made him certain he had crossed over, if only briefly.
That certainty, however, came with clarity. Renner later reflected on the mistake that caused it all, acknowledging he forgot to engage the parking brake or disengage the snowcat’s steel tracks. The actor, now living with permanent injuries including a shattered jaw and misaligned teeth, says the accident forced him to strip life down to its essentials.
For Jeremy Renner, survival wasn’t just a physical comeback. It became a shift in perspective, shaped not just by pain but by the decision to keep going.