Jeremy Renner gives his first interview with Diane Sawyer he opens up about his near-fatal snow plow accident and shares some horrifying new details about his injuries.
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The 52-year-old Marvel actor spent time in an intensive care unit after he was accidentally run over by his own snowplow on New Year’s Day.
He told Sawyer that all he remembers next is that he lost his footing and fell off the side. He was alright at first but worried that the machine was going to sandwich his nephew in between it and the nearby truck, he tried to immediately jump back in.
“It is what it was and it’s my mistake,” he said, “and I paid for it.”
The accident left him clinging to life with more than 30 broken bones.
‘It felt like someone took the wind out of you’
“I just happened to be the dummy standing on the dang track a little bit, seeing if my nephew was there,” Renner said. “You should be inside the vehicle when you’re operating [it,] you know what I mean? It’s kind of like driving a car with your foot outside the car … It is what it was. And it’s my mistake, and I paid for it.”
“If I was there on my own, it would have been a horrible way to die and surely I would have, surely,” Renner said in the interview clip.
“But I wasn’t alone, [there] was my nephew, sweet Alex, and the rest of the cavalry came.”
In a clip from the interview, Jeremy Renner: The Diane Sawyer Interview – A Story of Terror, Survival, and Triumph, the actor breaks down in tears as he describes lying in the hospital.
“So I’m writing down notes on my phone [which are the] last words to my family,” he said, speaking to Sawyer.
ABC played the 911 call that was made of Renner’s accident. In that audio clip, Renner’s neighbor, Rich Kovach, who was helping the actor, can be heard saying, “he’s been crushed,” and begging for immediate assistance.
“Listen to me, I need — you might wanna get life flight out here immediately,” the man says as Renner can be heard moaning in the background. “…He’s in rough shape.”
“It was a horrible sound, just literally watching somebody die in front of you,” Fletcher said. “At one point he just got a clammy feel to him and he turned this gray, green color and I feel in my heart that I lost him for a second.”
“I really feel he did pass away for a couple of seconds,” she added.
Renner says Kovach, Fletcher and his nephew “kept him alive.”
“I chose to survive. That’s not gonna kill me, no way,”
“I’ve lost a lot of flesh and bone in this experience, but I’ve been refueled and refilled with love and titanium.”
Watch the interview:
credit: ABC News, USA Today, CBS News, Sky News