Jeremy Renner detailed the graphic extent of his injuries in the first interview since his New Year’s Day snowplough accident.
During the interview, ABC’s Diane Sawyer read out Renner’s long list of injuries: “Eight ribs broken in 14 places, right knee, right ankle broken, left leg tibia broken, the left ankle broken, right clavicle broken, right shoulder broken, face, eye socket, the jaw, the mandible broken, lung collapsed, pierced from the rib bone, your liver, which sounds terrifying.”
“I believe I could see my eye with my other eye,” the Hawkeye star told Sawyer, revealing one of his eyes had bulged out of its socket.
Sawyer also interviewed Renner’s neighbours who called the paramedics after he was struck down by the 14,000-pound Sno-Cat.
“He had some blood coming out of his ears, I know for sure, and then his eye, it looked like it had been punched out,” Rich Kovach said.
Doctors were, fortunately, able to rebuild the actor’s eye socket with metal plates and screws, and he now has full vision out of both eyes again.
Recalling the pain he experienced, Renner said he was “awake through every moment”.
“It is hard to imagine what that feels like, but when you look at the machine and you look at... I was on asphalt and ice. I wish I was on snow. It felt like someone took the wind out of you. Too many things are going on in the body to feel pain, it’s everything. It’s like if your soul could have pain.”
In his recovery, Renner said his Marvel and The Hurt Locker costar Anthony Mackie “was there at my bedside”.
Elsewhere in the interview, Renner revealed he screamed “Not today, motherf***er” right before the moment he was run over by the snowplough.
Renner added that he’d “do it again” “because it was going right at my nephew”.
Jeremy Renner: The Diane Sawyer Interview – A Story of Terror, Survival and Triumph is out now on Hulu and Disney Plus .
