“I could see my left eye with my right eye” — the Hawkeye star relives the agony and peace of his near-death experience in raw new memoir
Hollywood tough guy Jeremy Renner is opening up like never before — and his latest bombshell has fans shaken. In his emotional new memoir My Final Breath, the Avengers actor reveals that he technically died after being crushed by a 14,000-pound snowplow on New Year’s Day 2023.
“I died, right there on the driveway to my house,” Renner wrote, recalling the terrifying moment at his Lake Tahoe home when he was left mangled and motionless in the snow.
“Six f—ing wheels, seventy-six steel blades, 14,000 pounds of machine, all ranged against one human body,” he said of the PistenBully Snowcat that rolled over him.
Renner, now 54, was trying to help a family member move a stuck vehicle when disaster struck. But what followed was beyond even the most harrowing action scene he’s ever filmed.
“I know I died — in fact, I’m sure of it,” he wrote. EMTs reportedly told him his heart rate had dropped to a mere 18 beats per minute, medically classifying him as “basically dead.”
And yet, the actor described the moment with an eerie calm: “There was no time, place, or space… only a kind of electric, two-way vision made from strands of inconceivable energy.”
“An exhilarating peace,” he called it.
“I could see my lifetime” — Renner relives his out-of-body moment
Lying on the ice for over 30 minutes, Renner says he manually breathed through crushing pain:
“An effort akin to doing 10 or 20 push-ups per minute for half an hour.”
Then came the out-of-body experience:
“I could see everything all at once,” he wrote. “In death there was no time at all, yet it was also all time and forever.”
Bodycam footage from the incident, since made public, captured the chaos as first responders rushed to save the actor who had suffered more than 30 broken bones — including both legs, eye sockets, ribs, jaw, pelvis, and more.
“I could see my left eye with my right eye”
Yes, you read that correctly.
Renner says his injuries were so severe, his face was physically distorted beyond belief.
“I had no full sense then what a hot mess my body was in,” he admitted, citing a collapsed rib cage, dislocated shoulder, and a punctured lung.
With freezing temperatures adding to the trauma, Renner hovered between life and death until he was airlifted for emergency surgery.
“A great reminder” — the star says the accident gave him new purpose
Despite the horror, Renner insists the accident redefined his view on life.
“If we get too stressed or if things get too difficult… Just put one foot down, and then another, and move towards it,” he told Jimmy Fallon in a recent appearance, echoing the resilience he’s now known for.
And after a year of grueling recovery, the once-crushed star is standing tall — not just as an actor, but as a survivor, a father, and an unlikely source of spiritual inspiration.
