While everyone was either celebrating the new year or suffering the consequences of overindulgence the night before, news of what happened to Jeremy Renner on New Year’s Day 2023 sent shockwaves through Hollywood. Jeremy Renner had a tragic start to this year. Around 9 am on January 1, he had an almost-fatal accident when he was run over by his 14,330-pound (roughly 6,500 kg) Snowcat or snow plow during a dramatic rescue attempt. In a new interaction, Jeremy said his eyes “popped out” after the accident.
Mirror reported that Jeremy sustained massive injuries including a shattered right knee, broken jaw and broken clavicle, as well as a punctured liver and a collapsed lung – and was also left with a condition known as “flail chest.” Doctors surgically attached metal plates to his torso to stabilize his ribcage – and more plates were used to reconstruct a collapsed eye socket. A metal rod was also added to his shin to help hold it together.
The Academy Award nominee recounted it all in Jeremy Renner: The Diane Sawyer Interview — A Story of Terror, Survival, and Triumph , which hit ABC on Thursday, April 6, at 10 p.m. ET. It’s currently available on Hulu as well. This was his first-ever on-screen appearance since the accident that happened near his Nevada home. Detailing the horror, Renner indicated that he survived because he wasn’t alone .
Daily Mail reports that Hawkeye star’s “eight ribs were broken in 14 pieces as a result of the blunt chest trauma – an injury known as ‘flail chest,’ defined as three or more ribs broken in at least two places.” The report further explained, “Flail chest causes part of the rib cage to become separated from the chest wall instead of rigidly holding the normal shape of the chest. The broken bones pierced his liver and likely caused his lung to collapse.”
On Monday, Jeremy Renner appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and said, “It [was like being under] a giant metal cookie roller. It just missed every vertebra and did not hit any organs. My brain did not swell. My eye did pop out. That’s weird. But I got pretty lucky that none of the organs got messed up.”
Renner recounts that the machines began to roll out of control, and he leaped from the cabin of the machine to try and reach his nephew and warn him of danger as he was tending to a car in the path of the snow machine. Jeremy was tragically pulled under the machine and crushed and is said to be lucky to be alive – while his nephew, Alexander Fries , was unharmed.
He recounted the moment he was run over, telling Diane: “This whole [right] side of my body, I don’t really feel sensitivity to touch, but it’ll grow. I can feel it, the change already in two months. I feel hardly any of my teeth on the upper part because they went inside my face to put in two plates because of an orbital crack. I’m learning to speak again.” Jeremy adds: “I was on asphalt and ice. It feels like you imagine it. I could see my eye from my other eye. I was seeing stars… I moved my legs, and I said, that one’s really messed up. That leg is going to be a problem.”
Renner was airlifted to Renown Regional Medical Center, where he underwent surgery and remained in the ICU in a “critical but stable condition” for close to 20 days. He announced on January 17 that he was back home and recovering.