Although he’s probably best-known as the sharp-shooting Avenger ‘Hawkeye’, Jeremy Renner has also joined the ranks of celebrities that have had their life changed by a paranormal experience, specifically a near-death experience that has changed the two-time Oscar-nominated actor’s outlook on life, leading him to “invest into love and my shared relationships that I experience love with, ’cause that is the only thing that you take with you.”

 

In an interview regarding his book about his life-threatening snowplow accident, My Next Breath: A Memoir, Renner recounted the events of the morning of New Year’s Day 2023, when he was accidentally run over by his snowcat while attempting to save his nephew from being run over by the vehicle; the incident left Renner with 38 broken bones and blunt-chest trauma that required major surgery. Although he was released from hospital 16 days later, the ordeal left him unable to walk for three months, and at first only with the help of a cane.   

But while waiting for the ambulance to arrive—delayed by half an hour due to conditions caused by the previous night’s snowstorm—Renner said that his life, however briefly, expired.

“I died before they got there, because I got too tired of breathing,”

 

–briefly succumbing to the exertion of having to force his collapsed chest to expand and contract for 25 minutes.

 

“I just ran out of energy.”

“It’s the most exhilarating peace you could ever feel,” Renner said about the resulting NDE while recounting the experience on the May 21 episode of the Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa podcast.  “You don’t see anything but what’s in your mind’s eye. Like, you’re the atoms of who you are, the DNA, your spirit. It’s the highest adrenaline rush, but the peace that comes with it, you know, it’s magnificent. It’s so magical.”

“And I didn’t want to come back! I remember I was brought back and I was so pissed off!”

Immediately aware of his injuries once again, Renner thought: “Oh, shit, I’m back!”

“People have near-death experiences, they talk about the light, going into the white room, sometimes they see people from their past” host Kelly Ripa pointed out before asking her guest “did any of that happen to you?”

“All that,” was Renner’s immediate reply. However, he admitted that prior to his experience he was unfamiliar with the NDE phenomenon. “I was very insular, I knew nothing about near death experience,” he continued. “I had no experiences of it, or anybody else that did it, it’s a big thing. There’s a lot of research done on it, and fascinating, to me, the confirmations that I received by listening to other people’s stories, and how similar they are—almost word-for-word—experiencing all the same thing.

“A lot of confirmations that I got from it, things I believe and, you know, it’s a great, great relief is all I can say. It’s a wonderful, wonderful relief to be removed from your body. ”

When asked if he communicated with anyone while out-of-body, Renner replied that:

“you don’t need to: that’s a human experience; time is a human construct, it’s useless!”

 

He went on to describe existence on the other side as being “not linear; it’s not how it exists; it’s just like the most remedial version of your spirit’s existence is being on Earth. This is so remedial:

 

language and all these things; it’s all-knowing, all-experiencing at the same time, all at once.”

The experience instilled a new view on life for Renner:

 

“It’s a great confirmation, and it makes me—a man that didn’t want to come back—really be able to be back here, and live on my terms, as a captain of my own ship, and get on it or off it.
I’m going to live life on my own terms, for nobody else; very clear, the white noise is ripped away. I repel the things I gave credence to; can’t stomach the idea that things I gave credence to prior to the accident, why I gave so much value to things that have zero value.”

“I knew then, as I know now to this day and will always know: Death is not something to be afraid of.”