Jeremy Renner recalls the “crushing force” of the snow plow that twisted his bones “like a pretzel.”

Actor Jeremy Renner has spoken about the excruciating pain he endured when he was run over by a snowplow in January 2023 — a terrifying ordeal that left him with more than 38 broken bones — and how his path to recovery left him with a new perspective on life.

The panic arose on New Year’s Day near his home in Reno, Nevada, when he was clearing snow with his nephew.

The 53-year-old star, known for his role as Hawkeye in Disney’s Marvel superhero series, stepped out of the cab of the massive PistenBully snow plow. As he spoke to his nephew, the 14,000-pound machine rolled forward.

Renner made a “nanosecond judgment” and tried to jump back into the machine’s cabin to shut it down, he recalled in an interview with Men’s health Published Tuesday.

But his foot got stuck in the nanny’s huge, tank-like treads, and they dragged his body down.

“I remember every undulation. I remember my head was hitting this thing and it was pressing down on me — it’s exactly how you think it would feel. An immobile object and overwhelming force, and something has to give. But thank God, my skull didn’t completely give in,” he told the magazine. .

“And then it just kept going. It undulated, undulated, undulated, undulated. My cheekbone broke, my eye socket broke, and then because of the crushing of the machine, my eye swelled up. I could see my left eyeball with my right eyeball,” he explained.

“I was screaming for air. I needed to get all my energy out of the air so I could suck air back in,” Renner recalls. “There was no breathing. It was a muscle I had to use to squeeze, “It’s hard to use your stomach muscles when you have 14 broken ribs and a blown out lung. I didn’t know that at the time, I just needed to get some air.”

Renner said he spent the first five minutes thinking about how to breathe, then about 10 minutes later his neighbors showed up and called 911.

“My ribs are stabbing me and my lungs. Mind you, my leg was twisted like a pretzel – and I didn’t feel it—! I’m thinking, ‘Oh, s—, that’s going to hurt later.’ Oh, that’s my eyeball – that’s kinda weird! I say, ‘S—, I wonder if this breathing problem is just a spasm. Let me breathe properly, and then I can tell the family that we won’t go skiing today.

“But then I started to feel very tired. My heart rate was getting lower, lower, lower. ‘Hohohohahahahaha’,’ Just do this thorough breathing for 45 minutes. But with the exhaustion there was almost peace.”

When the emergency medical team arrived, he said to himself: “I must surrender my body to them, because I am cooked.”

From there, Renner is left with fragmented memories of being airlifted to the hospital and spending days in the intensive care unit.

He said that he broke more than 38 bones: his ribs, pelvis, right knee, right ankle, left leg bone, left ankle, right collarbone, right shoulder, eye socket, jaw, lower jaw, wrist, and toes on his left foot. His lung collapsed and he was bruised, his liver was punctured by a rib bone, he had a large laceration to the back of his head that was stapled up, he was unable to hear from his right eardrum, and he suffered a bruise and impact to his body. Left eye.

When he regained consciousness, he found himself surrounded by his family.

“I said ‘Give me a pencil’ – I’ve been completely intubated, and I’ve got a huge hose inside me – and I wrote, ‘Oh my God—‘. ‘I’m so sorry. I love you all so much.’ It seems like a weird thing to say, but that was the driving force behind me getting up in the first place, bro.

The eldest of seven children, Renner, who described having a large, deeply loving family full of children, said he did not think twice about protecting his nephew in the crash.

“I’m not going to let anyone get hurt while I’m around. That’s why I’m putting my life on the line for my nephew. I’m not going to let that thing crush him! I couldn’t live with that,” he said. “If it were the other way around, if I couldn’t Going back to that thing and then crushing it… I wouldn’t be a good man now… I would be haunted by the curse. “

Renner, known for his roles in action films such as “The Avengers” and “Mission: Impossible,” said he had no idea he was being harmed.

“I thought, ‘No problem, I’ve got this, I’ll dive through these tracks, button it up, piece of cake!’

Since the accident he… I underwent physical therapyinterventions such as red light therapy and hyperbaric chamber therapy, and returned to work in the third season of the Paramount Plus show “Mayor of Kingstown,” where he plays Mike McLusky.

But the return was not easy. He said that when filming began on January 9, he was “fragile.”

“We were walking around on the ice, and I didn’t have any energy. I was sleeping. But I think it’s going to be the best season yet because of that. Don’t get me wrong, Mike is still Mike — he’s still the guy you want as your friend. But it’s more emotional.” “Because I am more emotional.”

A key part of his return to work was a shift in perspective.

“The last thing I wanted to do – to be honest with you, I almost stopped filming and do this show – was a fantasy… I have to live in the real reality here, because these bones and these joints – and I have to go and say fake lines and fake words and pretend… “What?” he explained. “That’s how I changed it, because I only have control over my point of view: I’m coming to Pittsburgh to recover in my body and get better every day, and I’m going to do this show on the side. Instead of it being the other way around.”

The accident also taught him to receive the love that was pouring in from family and friends.

“There are so many people who love me. And I had no idea. I had to learn how to receive all this love, and it’s not easy. From people you don’t even know. Why is this incident such a thing? But then I said, ‘F —, stop asking why.” “Just take it,” he said. “I was famous for having a bow and arrow; now I’m famous for conquering something like a man.