On New Year’s Day in 2023 Jeremy Renner died. Technically. The “Hawkeye” and “Mayor of Kingstown” actor was in a life-threatening snow plow accident that broke 38 of his bones, punctured his lung, and caused one of his eyeballs to come out of his head. Today he has a lot of titanium holding him together. He’s also the face of a new Brooks Running campaign, “Let’s Run There.”
Runner’s World interviewed Renner about his recovery process, including his seemingly impossible return to running and ambitions for speedy 40-yard dash.
Runner’s World: Before your accident, what did your running regimen look like? Did it play a role in your “Hawkeye” prep? Did you turn to running as a way to clear your mind?
Jeremy Renner: Health & Injuries sprinting uphill, like training stairs. I was never a long-distance runner. Unless I was going through a breakup or I needed to emotionally repair because running is really good for that. Otherwise, I didn’t typically run. If I did, it would be a mile, maybe two miles, but that’s all my body typically allowed. I wasn’t just going out for a run. That wasn’t my thing.
After your accident, it was unclear how you would come out of it, whether you’d be able to even walk, let alone run. Initially, how did you take this prognosis?
One of the doctors said, “Yeah, you’ll walk.” Then, I had a lot of doctors saying lots of different things. I had one who was like, “Yeah, I know you’ll walk again, but it’ll be like a year-and-a-half and you’re not going to walk right, so it’s not going to be the same.” I know doctors also don’t want to overpromise. They weren’t trying to bring me down and be heavy, but I was pretty shattered. I was a pretty shattered man. They were hopeful I was going to heal all right but didn’t think I was really going to be able to move too much.
Let’s talk recovery. What did those early days look like? You need to walk before you can run, right? At what point did you say, “I want to try running?” And what did that look like?
You have to walk before you can run, and you have to stand up before you can walk. It’s the whole progression. I committed to a milestone for me, which was three months after the accident, wanting to be able to walk the red carpet for the “Rennervations” show that I was in and producing.
It was also a big milestone to be able to stand up and be around for my daughter’s birthday. Every joint broke. So, it makes all those milestones more meaningful.
After that, it’s just being able to move. I used a cane then, and the progression really was happening, and I was setting certain milestones.
Running was because I stood up, I was walking, and I was doing a lot more than anybody ever anticipated. I even surprised myself. I said by the end of the summer, I was going to be sprinting and running for 4.5 40 [a 40-yard dash to test fitness of potential NFL athletes]. It was a little ambitious but might as well aim high, right? But that wasn’t the case. I was still struggling with strengthening and walking and didn’t realize how damaged my tendons were, which is the real issue for me now. It wasn’t so much the bones. It was all the damage to the tissue and all the metal and joints.
Heather Mayer Irvine?
I didn’t expect to run. I didn’t try to run. I just went and did it. I didn’t think about it and it all happened. That’s why it became one of the most important times in my recovery. It was such a beacon of hope. Every time I talk about it, I get choked up. It’s like it’s like when someone says, “You’re not going to. It’s not going to happen.” I’m like, excuse my words but, “F*** you. It is happening.”
There’s been planted seeds of “it’s not going to happen,” but it’s not going to stop me. And they might be right, but it felt really good to be right that day [that I ran]. I didn’t really try to be right that day. It just happened. That’s where it all came flooding. I was like, “Wow, I really have a lot of hope for a lot of other future things for myself.” There hadn’t been any milestones for pretty much all summer. I was consistently walking around and doing okay, but that one was a big milestone for me.
Track and Fields New Barbie Doll?
I was posting online about all the recovery and all these milestones. Sharing with people is very cathartic for me. People were really interested in finding out what actually happened—or maybe it was maybe inspiring them—so I kept posting about it and was very forthright about everything that I was going through.
In doing so, Brooks reached out to say, “We think we could help you. We think we’ve got some shoes that you might like.” I’m like “Yes” to everything. Whatever it was that they wanted to send me—a bag of bricks—I’ll take it.
I got these shoes, and they were comfy. I actually wore them around the house like slippers because I have stone floors, and it was pretty cozy on my joints to go get coffee and stuff.
I wore them on the treadmill a few times. But to really use them with gravity in the real world was 10 months after the accident. Even though it wasn’t meant to be an important day, it became one of the most important days in my recovery, probably because there was zero expectation of it.
It was the day that The Runners World Vegetarian Cookbook in the Ghost Max black shoes. I got to skip down the driveway, which I was feeling pretty good about, but then I decided to sprint back up with a high-knee sprint. I think because of the incline and the shoes, there wasn’t too much torque on all these busted garage-sale parts of my legs. And it happened. I did it a couple of times.
I posted that experience, and my trainer filmed me going up and down the driveway. It became quite a popular post in realizing how important it was to me, for a lot of people, and even probably for Brooks. After that, a couple of months later, they said, “We’re doing this Let’s Run There campaign, and we think you’d be really a great fit for it.”
After Nearly Dying in a Snow Plow Accident, Actor Jeremy Renner Wants to Run a 4.5 40-Yard Dash.
We’re at the end of May 2024. How long have you been running since the accident? What running-related goals do you have looking ahead?
My first run post-accident was at my 10-month mark, bringing us to over seven months of working at these running goals. The big goal I’m still sticking to is the 4.5 [40-yard dash]. I’m sticking to that because I’m never going to run a marathon. I would like to be able to be in less pain. I don’t want to feel like I feel when I run. I want to feel like I look when I run because I look pretty dang good when I run.
I think all that’s going to happen. It’s just going to be a lot of repetition to get my body right to do that. I got the right shoe, the right company to support me, and it’s just going to take my work and some grit. There’s a lot of moving to get out and just move these dang legs. That’ll be the steps to maybe getting there.
Hawkeye [Renner’s Avengers character] doesn’t technically have “superhuman powers.” But he’s at peak physical fitness. Do you channel him now, in your recovery and return to running? If so, how has that inspired you?
No, there’s nothing that’s ever really about me. If I want to do something, if I want to get up and walk, it’s for my daughter. If I want to be able to run, like running a 4.5 40, that’s a milestone because it’s going to allow me other options in life.
I always think about my daughter as the character, or my mother who had to endure that terrible New Year’s Eve and nurse me back to health, changing a diaper and doing all this stuff again. Those are the characters. Those are the characters that I took on that fueled me to get better. Because the better I got, the more that they would heal and the happier they would get. They would get so proud with all these little milestones that I would meet—even the dumb ones, like getting into a wheelchair and not pee in a jar anymore. My mom’s like, “Yes, I love that one!”
My family, my poor nephew, who had to be there in the accident with me and watch me die—if you will. They were my characters. All of them, my whole family, everyone that I affected, my improvements, my progress, my health, my well-being, each milestone, is all for them because of them.
Track and Fields New Barbie Doll Runner’s World, On New Years Day in 2023 The Runner’s World Vegetarian Cookbook, and a nine-time marathoner with a best of 3:23. She’s also proud of her 19:40 5K and 5:33 mile. Heather is an RRCA certified run coach.
