Jeremy Renner wasn’t exactly happy to return to land of the living after getting a taste of the afterlife.
The 54-year-old Avengers actor revealed on a recent episode of Kelly Ripa’s Let’s Talk podcast that his initial reaction to learning that he’d been revived after his devastating 2023 snowplow accident was that he wished he could return to the proverbial place beyond the veil.
“It’s a great relief is all I can say,” Renner said of the feeling that came with his near-death experience. “It’s a wonderful, wonderful relief to be removed from your body. It is the most exhilarating peace you could ever feel. 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, it’s magnificent. It’s so magical.”
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It was so all-encompassing that it was hard to part ways with it when he was resuscitated. “And I didn’t want to come back,” Renner said. “I remember, and I was brought back and I was so pissed off. I came back, I’m like, ‘Aww!’”
The Hawkeye star acknowledged that he was only in the afterlife for a few minutes, but that the feeling stuck with him. “I saw the eyeball again, I’m like, ‘Oh, s—, I’m back,’” he recalled. “Saw my legs. I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s gonna hurt later.’ I’m like, ‘All right, let me continue to breathe.'”
Renner was run over by a snowplow at his Reno, Nevada vacation home while trying to prevent the vehicle from hitting his nephew on New Year’s Day 2023. He was airlifted to the hospital and suffered severe injuries as a result of the accident, which included over “30-plus broken bones,” a lacerated liver, and a collapsed lung.
He detailed his healing journey — which included countless physical therapy sessions and having to learn how to walk again — in his new memoir, My Next Breath.
When asked by Ripa if he got the chance to speak to anyone while he was gone, Renner replied, “You don’t need to. That’s a human experience. Time is a human construct. It’s useless. It’s 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, all these things and blah, blah, blah… It’s all knowing, all experiencing, all at the same time, all at once.”
These days, Renner said he views his accident as a “great confirmation” about what’s really important in life.
“It makes me — a man that didn’t want to come back — really be able to be back here and live it on my terms as the captain of my own ship,” he said. “And get on it or off it, I don’t give a f—. I’m going to live life on my own terms and for nobody else. [It’s] very clear. The white noise is ripped away.”
It’s also taught him to “repel the things I gave credence to” before the incident.
“I gave so much value to things that have zero value,” he said. “So I invest into no stocks or bonds. I invest under crypto or Bitcoin. I invest into love and my shared relationships that I experience love with. ’cause that is the only thing that you take with you.”
Listen to Renner talk about dying in the podcast above.
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