Note: Text has been lightly edited for clarity and does not match audio exactly.

Katie O'Connor: Hi, listeners. I'm Audible Editor Katie O'Connor, and today I'm honored to be speaking with Academy Award nominee, producer, and philanthropist Jeremy Renner about his memoir, My Next Breath, which details his recovery from a harrowing snowcat accident on New Year's Day 2023. Welcome, Jeremy.

Jeremy Renner: Thank you for having me.

KO: First, I just wanted to say that I loved your memoir. Listening to it was such a visceral experience. You obviously lived through this moment in real time when a 14,000-pound snowcat ran you over as you attempted to stop it and save your nephew Alex from its impact. I'm sure you relived it every day during your recovery. Then you relived it while writing this memoir, and then yet again while narrating it. What was it like saying everything out loud as you recorded the audiobook?

JR: Oh, yeah, once the book was written, that was seemingly the hardest part. Reading it was then the hardest part. Then, I was wrong—reading it out loud, the voice-over, that was probably the most difficult part. And I do voice-overs for a living too. So that part of it's kind of easy, but there's nothing about this narrative that's easy. I had to let go of the professional voice-over guy. I had a whole program, how I'd do any job. But this is not a job. This is my life. This is something very personal. I think we all just sort of agreed—there was somebody there to help kind of direct or to be a listener for me. And if he didn't understand something or if I didn't articulate something, so I didn't have to read it like four or five times over. I found it to be quite interesting. I found it to be very exhausting. I think, physically, just reading a book out loud for like six, seven hours, it's pretty brutal. You gotta read it several times.

But there's something quite cathartic about it. I don't know if there's anything enjoyable about it, to be honest. But I had to be very honest, and just thinking about certain phrases or certain experiences, I get emotional about it. I get triggered by certain things. I just allowed myself to be triggered and speak if I'm getting choked up or getting a little fired up about something or whatever it was. There's nothing enjoyable about it, it just wasn't. But I'm glad I did it. I'm glad I got to do it. My voice, to tell the narrative, I think is quite important. And then I told them, I'm not going to act out any parts. I'm just going to read this and just be very, very kind of dry with the narrative. The narrative is strong enough as it is. I'm not acting it out because we had the 911 call, and I wasn't going to reenact this thing.

I'm like, "Dude, it's such a disservice.” I'm like, “I can't do this. Why don't we just use the live 911 tape?" They thought that was a great idea. It really kind of elevates it to this sort of documentary feel of a narrative. It's pretty great. Not pleasant for me to listen to. But I think it's good for the listener to kind of grab for some context.

KO: Yeah, I think that moment in particular, that inclusion of those 911 tapes, it's so raw, it's so vulnerable. It obviously makes the audio this very different listening experience. You can hear the panic in your neighbor Rich's voice, and you can hear you really struggling on the ice for your next breath. It's hard not to be affected in that moment listening to it.

JR: Yeah, and that's kind of the plus for having the audio, outside my voice, it's that sort of extra element. In the book, there's the photos that gave the context to what I looked like before, after, the scene, what my family looks like, the image of what a snowcat. It's hard to describe in words, what a snowcat really is, because it's not a very popular machine that people can really grasp, what a tank-like-looking snow-removal machine looks like. So, you've got those images in the book. The book definitely gets the plus of some of the images. But the audio and Audible gets that 911 call and then my voice. So, pluses to both sides to it, but I think that the audio version, Audible version of it, it's pretty compelling.

KO: Yeah, you can really hear the raw emotion in your voice. And you strike me as an empath, especially as in the aftermath of the accident you kept saying, “This didn't just happen to me, it happened to everyone.” I think many others might have been inwardly focused in that moment. "Oh, woe is me. Why did this happen to me? How will I ever recover?" But you were really just as focused on your family's emotional recovery as you were on your own emotional and physical recovery. Can you talk to me about that love and that bond that laid the foundation for that type of reaction in you?

JR: I mean, it's what took over. The love is what took over. If I had nothing to come back for, I wouldn't have come back. I came back for that love, and a love that I was testing. I wouldn't want to be on that side of the fence or that side of the accident—helpless, anguished, terrified. I mean, all the feelings that my family was having. I would not want to be in their shoes. It was way worse on that side of the fence than it was just being crushed. I was just crushed. And I knew my existence. They didn't. They had to worry. They had a lot of questions. They had a lot of unanswered everything. I didn't.

"There's a lot of lessons that [my daughter] learned that I could never teach her if I didn't get in that accident."

First of all, I was in a coma at that point. But even after, when I woke up, I was intubated and I saw them all at the end of the bed, and that was the beginning of my recovery. I knew what I had to do. I had to heal my family. In order to heal my family, I had to get better and get better fast. I couldn't bear to see the look on their faces. They were very happy to see me awake for the first time. But you can read in their face there's like 36 hours of no sleep and terror. And my mom aged probably five years. It was quite an awful view, even though it was very beautiful and I was elated. But I knew I had to get to work very quickly, to heal them. If I didn't have them, I wouldn't have been brought back in the first place. So, it's the only thing I had to focus on because focusing on just myself to get better was one thing, but to get better to heal them was a real, real motivator for me.

KO: It's very moving to hear that desire of yours, to understand what that day did to them as well. Another thing that was very moving throughout this memoir is your relationship with your daughter, Ava. It's very clear that it's a very special one. She actually performs on the audiobook as well. She wrote such a sweet essay. It was about you after the accident, driving to pick her up from school, an event that is so banal, something that most of us take for granted. But she saw both the beauty in it and the miracle in it. What does it mean for you getting to have her be a part of the memoir in this way?

JR: Ava was my life force. I didn't see her until day 13 or something after the incident. And forgetting at times that I had parent responsibilities, and a lot of things were kind of out the window, so she brought me back to my life force. The reason why I have joy and live a good life is because of her. I had to really get better for her. My job as a parent is to protect her and not have her be afraid of things and teach her how to be brave. I did the very opposite of that by dying. She didn't know I died, but just by being in the condition I am, it scared her to a place that I needed to correct very quickly.

We moved through some stuff as the beautiful little adult relationship that we have. There's wounds. There's a heaviness that comes with this kind of stuff, but we operate on the light side of it. We choose to operate on love, on the work. On, yeah, “Things almost were bad, but they're okay. I made it, and we're going to get better. And it's going to be all right. Just need your help for a minute.” Traumatic experiences can bring people so close that even if you're already close, you understand it's quite endless, the depth of love that you can have with somebody. It really is quite special.

She had to go through her own processes, and a lot we gotta do together. That's most important, because that's our healing, is we got through it all together as a family, then her and I as father-daughter. I remind her at times, whether at the top of a roller coaster somewhere or walking through Pompeii in Italy or wherever, just look how far we've come. Just great, wonderful reminders. It's a barometer for what is possible. It's such a negative experience. It's not like, “Oh, I died.” Or “It was an accident.” It's just what's possible, what is possible for our love, our strength, if we work together, if you believe in each other.

There's a lot of lessons that she learned that I could never teach her if I didn't get in that accident, and I only taught her just by overcoming a lot of obstacles. She was constantly surprised by the efforts and then how I surpassed all goals. I said, "Why don't you give me a goal?" And I surpassed it. We sort of gamify the recovery. There's wonderful things that I wish I could teach my daughter, but I just inadvertently did teach her because of the accident. It'll be something to always wonderfully look back on with great memories, I think. We gave credence for fear and terror and questions to live, where it didn't have to, because look where we are. We didn't have to be fearful in those moments.

KO: Yeah, a new level of gratitude, I'm sure. In the memoir, you call yourself a realist. You say that you're not a fan of overly optimistic people. But I would imagine that it would require a ton of optimism to overcome 38 broken bones, your collapsed lung, your eye popping out. Do you feel like that is an opinion that has changed at all? Or do you think you've really stayed anchored in that realist mentality?

JR: No, I definitely stayed anchored in the realist mentality, because I prioritized. Like, when I saw my eye out and I saw my legs twisted up, facing all the directions they're not supposed to be facing, I just said, "That's gonna hurt later. That's a real problem. That eye out there. Let me just put that into the snow a little bit so it stays on ice.” Literally. "I'll worry about that later." None of it mattered. I had to find air or I'm dead. So, I just prioritized things. I was realistic about it. “I'll worry about that later.” I said it to myself. “I need to worry about this breath, this next breath. If I don't get it, I'm gone.”

Nothing's changed. There's no optimism, sense of optimism—“let's just hope and pray it's all going to work out.” I'm like, "No, motherf--r, I have to exhale and then inhale. I gotta breathe or none of it matters.” I can't come cheerleading with this hope and optimism that it's all going to work out if I don't do anything.

So, maybe I'm an optimist, but a very actionable optimist, because there's a lot of optimists out there that just say a phrase and they think it's all going to be better because they said it. No, it's not. It's not going to get better because you said it. You gotta do something about it. So that's what I mean by me not being quite like the overly optimistic person. I have a positive mindset, but I'm a realist in my attitude—“Look, I gotta do something about it or it's not going to change."

I do think optimism is important. It's just when it's overly optimistic, it's unrealistic. It's like you're just cheerleading. Why don't you just accept this is a terrible situation and we can work through it together. Stop trying to make it something it's not. Don't candy-coat it. Don't try to put some lipstick on that damn thing. It's still ugly. Let's figure it out. Let's get through it together.

KO: Take the action.

JR: Exactly. What I went through was very ugly. No amount of lipstick would've fixed that situation [laughs].

KO: I did appreciate the jump-scare moment of you on the ice, to back in time in Lamaze class with your mom and being like, “That's how I knew how to breathe was from—” I was like, that's great. You share in the book that at 21 you were tired of your fears owning you and you decided to face them one by one. It was a decade of focusing on them every single day, everything from karaoke to sharks. And you described the accident as a fear that no one could have predicted. Did this experience ignite any new fears? And if so, how have you gone about tackling them?

JR: No, it's not something I give really any value to, is fears. It's just the unknown. It's already just a natural reaction for me because I've been doing it for so long that I just go into the eye of the storm. I could be afraid of something, don't get me wrong. There could be fears that might want to come into my life. But I don't even have a conscious thought about it anymore. I just go right into it. I go identify, because it's just the unknown, so let me get more educated and less ignorant about whatever the heck it is that might be scaring me or making me feel fearful. I just go get informed, and it relieves very, very quickly. The more you're informed, the less you're afraid. It's pretty much that simple. Get informed.

"I don't live the same life that I lived before. It's way better and it's way more beautiful."

So, nothing new has come. There's new things in my body, new information I have to find out. One just happened—there's a screw that seems like it's popping out of my leg. I go on a vibration plate, and I'm thinking, “Wait, is this thing going to unscrew out?” Because I’m on this thing that’s shaking, just for bone strength and bone density, and my trainer's like, "It looks like it's coming out." I'm like, "Oh, my God, I gotta call my doctor."

So, I called my doctor. I'm like, "You know the titanium rod in my leg, and I got the plate?" For whatever reason I was looking at my X-rays. “Why do I have a nail in there and then two screws?” I'm like, "Never mind, I don't want to know. But it looks like the screw’s coming out." He's like, "That can happen." I'm like, "You're kidding me!?" This is where nightmares are birthed, right? This is where they start.

I'm like, "What's going to happen? Is my leg just going to fall off? It's going to come off like a wagon wheel?" [laughs] It's like Carpentry 101, what happened in my body, what they do. They hammer this thing in there, so, yeah, it could come out. But it's not a big deal. They just take the screw out and it's done. You don't even need that stuff in there anymore. But you have to keep it in the [body]. You don't want to open back up for infections and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, the new fear was born with “these parts can unscrew.” Maybe you want to go to Home Depot, get one of those locking screws? Surely, they have those in the medical field. They just lock in and they don't screw back out. Why is this in my head now, that one of my ribs is just going to flop down? I don't know.

KO: I think maybe you need to go patent the medical locking screw and start collecting on that, is what I think the lesson is here.

JR: Yeah, you'd think. Unbelievable. So that was one thing that popped up since the accident that was like, “This is very concerning, man.” And then the doctor confirmed it, like, "Yeah, if you're pretty active and maybe the vibration is what you should be doing, but you might unload the thing."

KO: No, thank you.

JR: Because I'm such a visual person, I think you can kind of see that in my writing in the book. I write pretty visually for the reader. The images of all that sort of stuff. And every time I see this little screw, I'm like, “At some point, he's coming out.” But my leg's not going to fall off. Look, I'm not worried, let the part fall off. I don't care. Lop it off. Put a wooden peg there. I'm going to live a pirate life. Who cares?

KO: I mean, pirate life. You missed the opportunity for the eye patch, though. You overcame it.

JR: Dude, I think about it all the time. There was a version where that was happening. There's going to be an eye patch, there's going to be a wooden leg or a prosthetic. I was just going to get a parrot, a boat. Both my hands were okay, but I said, "Lop one off, because I want a blender, a flamethrower. I want the whole thing. I want all the little accoutrements for a little hand thing." I was just going to commit to it. And that was just me and my sense of humor, having to deal with the harrowing prognosis, I guess, of what was happening to my body or could be happening to my life because of that accident.

KO: So, you have played an agent in the Mission Impossible movies, a soldier in your Academy Award-nominated role in The Hurt Locker, a literal superhero, Hawkeye, in the Avengers franchise. These roles are physical and they're also traditionally masculine. In your memoir, you talk about how the gifts you received from the accident are greater than the pain you endured, that it simplified things for you. And it also made you a softer, more peaceful version of yourself. Have your views on masculinity changed at all post-accident?

JR: No, it wouldn't be a gender perspective at all or just even masculinity, because masculinity could be female, right? Couldn't it? I've always found masculinity to be soft and tender, communicative. Not toxic masculinity, where it's bullish and bullying. I grew up in a household of all women. I was a Lamaze coach for my mom. I taught my sisters how to put tampons in, or showed them options. I was just that guy. I was raised by women that made me a badass man. Masculinity, I think, there's a lot of emotional intelligence in masculinity. There's got to be a wonderful balance. The feminine and the masculine, I think they're hand-in-hand. I think like a truth and a lie, they both have to exist, otherwise neither exist. Otherwise, everything's just true or everything's just a lie.

So, the masculinity has not changed for me. I've always lived masculinity the way I am masculine, and like it or not, don't care. So that hasn't changed. There's so many other things that have been confirmed because of the incident, but masculinity and perception of masculinity is not one thing that has shifted. That's not one of them.

KO: That's interesting. I like that perspective. I think that makes sense within the context of your family too.

JR: There's so many more things of just perspectives in general. Obviously, gratitude is just deepened. The love is deepened in my family from the traumatic experience. And that can be very common. I'll never have a bad day. Perspectives, what a wonderful gift of perspectives. Like, you're going to have a bad day. I'm not a soothsayer. I don't have a crystal ball, but you're going to have one. I’m not. How much solace can be taken from that perspective and a thousand other perspectives, from the oversimplification of life. Because it is that simple. I wipe away all the things that I gave value to that don't have value. I cut the fat of bullshit in my life. And it took me dying to do it.

"I want to invest into our youth, the future of our world and the future of humanity, and give them just a shit-ton of love and opportunities that they just don't get."

But how wonderful, what I give credence to now. Oh, it's really quite so simple. I like to keep it that way. I know it's creeped back in, life, where recovery and discussion of the recovery or health wasn't on the forefront of the conversation. It's now just become like, “Hey, let's go get some gas and go pick up some tacos” or whatever the heck it is. Just the mundane stuff in life. But I don't really swim in what most people swim in anymore. I just refuse to. Does that make sense? I don't live the same life that I lived before. It's way better and it's way more beautiful. Why did I give so much energy away to things that didn't deserve it? Don't require it, didn't need it. I got brought back for a reason. I'm just applying my energy to myself first, so then now I can go spend my days on this spinning rock doing things that are good for myself, for my family, my daughter, and for these kids at the RennerVation Foundation.

KO: That's beautiful, and I think a beautiful lesson for your listeners, too, when they're examining their own lives, perhaps. Your mom was by your side throughout your recovery. And in your early hospital days, she was reading out loud to you from the book that she was reading at the time, which was Fairy Tale by Stephen King, so you could hear her voice. Now, please excuse me while I go start a petition for you to narrate the next Stephen King novel. But in the absence of that, what is next for you?

JR: Well, you could put that out in the universe. It could happen. It would be an honor. He's a wonderful writer. I love Stephen King. Yeah, look, I consider the future a little bit, because I have to. I don't give it much value. Maybe like five percent of my life is considering what's ahead. I just don't care. I can steer what my future looks like because I'm the captain of this ship. I can steer towards it. I don't have to set these goals, like, “In 10 years, I want to be doing this, in five years...” It's like I did when I was younger. I already have everything I want in life. The ship could stop here. So, I don't have to consider it so much. Yes, I do still love to work. I’ll always love to work, but I only do with people that I love and want to learn and grow with.

I'll never do a job just to do a job. There's no part that I really need to play or want to play or feel like I have to play. Nah, not happening. I'll still continue to work, doing things that inspire me, that give me a voice to empower others even. The book is a great example of that. The foundation, the RennerVation Foundation is a great example of that. It's giving these kids opportunity. We're set out for foster kids and underprivileged youth to give them opportunities that they've never had, give them continuity, consistency in their life. Just at least give them that, for God's sake, give them some community, let them see their siblings that they don't get to see a lot of times. Anyway, just give them the future of our planet.

I want to invest into our youth, the future of our world and the future of humanity, and give them just a shit-ton of love and opportunities that they just don't get. That's easy for me, man. That is easy. That's a layup. I'm the oldest of seven kids in my family, so I'll continue to do that and do that with my family. That's even more rewarding, to share that love and share that experience with these kids, with my family. It is like 15 of them directly involved into the foundation. That is the forefront of my actionability.

Will continue to do movies and doing this series that I'm still doing. Probably still do some more music. I'm still home-building, all the things that I love to do. I'm doing it because I want to do it, not for any other reason. Most importantly, it's shared experience. I'm doing nothing solo anymore. I used to have to work hard and make my gains in life by having to do things alone. I just refuse to do anything alone. That is the biggest, biggest shift in the narrative, moving forward, is that I'll only do things with those that I love and care about and share with, so I’m blessed to be able to do so.

KO: Well, thank you so much for your time today. It was an honor getting to meet you, and thank you for sharing this memoir with all of us. I hope that you enjoy all of the love that you're going to receive back as people get to listen to it and to read it.

JR: Yeah. I'm pretty excited about the release of this. It's going to be pretty special. Pretty, pretty excited about it. Never felt this way before.

KO: That's great. Enjoy it.

JR: Thank you.

KO: And listeners, you can get My Next Breath by Jeremy Renner right now on Audible.