Jeremy Renner
Appearances
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I think it depends on what the role really requires. Most of them, you know, like... For instance, like the Bourne Legacy, that required the most physical. And so we had to train, like, all sorts of mixed martial arts and judo and just all the different things, man.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah. Well, I mean, it's just sort of that's kind of more in the decision making to do the job. You know, it's those are the easy ones with great directors and great writing and great characters. You can go in with a lot more cerebral, much more emotional context.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Characters and a lot more people to work with. And the other ones like from the Avengers and born and all those mission possibles, there's It's much more about the stunts and the physical stuff, which is fun. It's just a different muscle to use. And ideally, you're sort of switching back and forth, right? I think so. I mean, to keep it all interesting, right?
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I'm on the third season of Mirror of Kingstown, right? I've never done that before. Repeated the same character. You've done an Ozark and you've done shit most of your life.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, yeah. There's something interesting about it. There's a controlled chaos in television today especially. We shoot like a film, like a 10-hour film in a third of the time. It's crazy. We'll be right back.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, yeah, he's great, man. I remember meeting with Ben on that. That's the first time I met him. I think my first meeting with him, sitting across, my first question to him was like, how are you going to direct this thing and act and star in it?
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I mean, you're kind of an okay actor. I mean, how are you going to direct and act in this thing? Kind of fucking with him. He's a beast.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
And he's so damn smart, man. Working with him was so, so great. And I really learned how – I mean, he gave me so much freedoms. I mean, he says, we're not going to do dialects. I've never been to Boston in my life. Yeah. Don't know anything about it, right? And he's like, we're not going to do any dialect coaches. I'm like, okay, great. Well, what the fuck am I going to do then?
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I'm like, all right. He introduced me to a bunch of people that just got out of prison. Yeah. And a bunch of armed robbers and all this shit, bank robbers. So I just hung out with these guys in the bars for a couple weeks in town. And then –
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
i kind of found the character and found what i was going to do oh that's no way that's cool yeah yeah yeah so it was it was but if we didn't shoot in boston i would have been royally screwed yeah um yeah but thank god thank god we were there because all all of my access to what i needed was there and uh and then he just wanted to be so smart and uh he just kind of let me do my thing and uh
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
At first, he would start to mouth my lines as I was acting with him. And I'm like, I had to turn my head. I'm like, I'm going to smash this motherfucker. I'm going to smash this fucker. But it only pissed me off. They'd get me more in the mood with this guy. Ah. But it was like the very first scene we shot. And I don't think he did it after that anymore. But yeah, he was great, man.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
He really was so great. He was working his butt off, man. But I really was, I fell in love with him and have so much respect for him. He's just one of the smartest guys I know, actually.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, yeah, and in theater. So I went in like with a criminology sort of idea I was going to study or computer science or some shit and then took an elective. And that's, I think I told you, I might have mentioned this to you, Jason, when we had dinner at Downey's, but I saw an elective
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
it when i was signing up for the courses and acting was one of them like i'll do this speech class i'll try this acting thing the only thing i that popped in my brain what I knew about acting was Michael J. Fox and fucking you, Jace, right? Because he shows these fucking family ties and all these goddamn things. It's the only thing I knew. It's what I watched, right? Growing up.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I mean, all those things. So I'm like, fuck, I'll try it. I'll try that thing. And went into it. This guy can do it. Yeah, this fucker can do it. I can do that shit. No, but that's just kind of what I watched with the kind of, I guess, you know, Related to. And then anyway, fell in love with theater and then started studying theater and psychology and just ran from there. Wow.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Which is what I'm saying. So I was like 18, 19. And yeah, just stuck with that.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Well, I mean, that just comes, I think that's the psychology sort of part of it. And you have to, I think there's a self-awareness and a confidence that, you know, that comes from doing stage. Yeah. You see a lot of, when people are stage actors, there's a, they hold it in their body a bit more. They're not just doing a scene or a thing. They kind of immerse in their body and spirit.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Because you have to do it for an hour and a half, two hours on stage, right? Yeah. really embody it longer than we do when we're doing television and film.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
No, no, I never considered music as a career. It's always a form of therapy, artistic. Bit of a hobby? Yeah, well, that's so much a hobby. I don't really believe in hobbies. I feel like you either do something or you don't. Right. I don't have fucking time for hobbies. That's hysterical. You know what I mean? Very good. I don't have time to just dip my toe in the water.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I'm not taking a fucking bath here in life, right? Yeah. It's dipping my toe in it. It's not happening. So I'm going to do something. Yeah, you do it or you don't, right?
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, you're right. I didn't want to be a player of music, right? I didn't want to be a guitar player or a drummer, which I am those things, or a piano player. I don't have the time or patience or even excellence or skill set to be able to do that. What I did want to do is be able to play instruments to compose songs to having a form of expression. Music is a wonderful form to express.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
And it's wonderfully shared as well. You can't really share a poetry so much as you can with music. It's more uniting in its experience. And so I love music for that. And that'll always be near and dear to me and very important to me in my life. But I don't want some record label saying, you've got to do this, you've got to do that. I'm like, no. where I have to do something.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Do stuff in the studio at this point. And, you know, like I did for the... from after the accident, I put together an EP of a collection of songs that were about their life, death, and recovery of this last sort of 16 months of my life or a year of my life. And I put out the... the seven songs on the anniversary of this year. Wow, that's really heavy, man. I didn't know that.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, look, it's – It's probably one of the greatest things that's happened to me in my life.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Wow. And it's not just because it happened to me. It happened to, well, we're talking about it now because you guys are aware of it. And so there's a lot of people around this planet. Yeah. It became a very personal experience that happened on my property. I was trying to save my nephew from being ran over by this snowplow and snowcat. But it's turned into not such a private experience.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I didn't know why. I was already on life support. And while everybody else was becoming aware of this incident. And then I wake up from it. I'm like, why is everybody freaking out? I'm fine. I'm going to get out of this hospital in two days. I'm walking out of here. It'll be no problem. Yeah. At least that's what the drugs are telling me. I must have been high as a kite thinking that, right? Yeah.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
But... There's a unifying understanding of or what was about to become knowledge of who I am as a man, a brother, a father, and a person. Not famous for what I did for a living. You know, I'm not Hawkeye anymore. I'm like, oh, this is Jeremy Renner and he overcame this incident or is overcoming this incident. And there's something really fucking gratifying about that where that changed my life.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Because I never liked being a celebrity. I never liked being adored for it. People call me Hawkeye, whatever. But being known for who you are as a human is really fucking cool.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
And people treat you different. They treat me differently now. They don't treat me like a fan of Hawkeye or whatever it might be. Yeah. Yeah. They're like, you know, here's an example. I, on March, um, like two months, three months after the accident, I took my daughter to, uh, the magic mountain in LA, right. In Valencia. Yeah. To ride all these roller coasters. I got cleared.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Go home and write these things. But it was like, I had to take the little cart around, the little golf cart thing you have to drive around, you know, because I couldn't walk very far. I could maybe walk like, you know, 15, 20 feet. So I had to drive this cart around. But everywhere I went, And it wasn't like I was being quiet about it, you know? I was just being me.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I had a boombox I brought, blasting music, thinking I'm having a good time. But I go up the line, right? They let me sort of go up in the front of the line. But people were like this Rudy, like slow clapping. And like, we're glad you're okay. It was such like a wonderful camaraderie. Like normally that situation would be like, oh, let me take something from you. I deserve a selfie. I want this.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I want this. Touch me, whatever. Now it's like much more, there's a level of like... Give. Yeah, it was... That's a wonderful shift that happened.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, it made me believe in goodness in people that I didn't fucking think existed. Yeah, I love that. In a big, big way, right? Not just a group of people and not just a couple people in my hometown or my neighborhood. This is like in a pretty global way that this is happening.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I believe that too. I just don't think they're in the right situations to have that come out.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Well, also they became allies. We were equals and they were my ally. They became human. It's everyone, every thought or prayer, if you will, is something I actually needed. I needed everything to recover.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
yeah yeah for me i think most people have uh i have a different you know relationship with fear first and foremost because i worked on it every day something i was afraid of for a decade i just i just don't have a lot of fear in my life i certainly wasn't afraid of death but you can think that and believe that but it's a confirmation now i found there's a lot of confirmations when you're tested to your limits into your death
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
and come back, there's a lot of confirmations that come out of that. Because I can believe in XYZ, but now there's proof in the pudding because I went there. And yeah, the exhilarating peace that happens in leaving this body with these limitations of spinning on this rock and this body with air and gravity and all this bullshit. But when you... It's an exhilaration and it's just a freedom.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
So you remember feeling that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Feeling that? Really? Yeah, yeah. And I take that feeling with me all the time now. Wow. You can't really put a visual... to it because there's no time, place or space. It's all sort of a continuum. Every human, every exchange that's happened is happening simultaneously all at once. It kind of has a little bit of that arrival kind of vibe in it.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Everything's all at once and it's a continuum and it's fucking exhilarating as it is peaceful at the same time. It's the greatest way I can describe it.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
It's a, yeah, to me it's a sort of fibrous, like a muscle fibrous sort of connectivity to all, it's all energy, right? So I guess that's the feeling that it is. I can't even say it's a visual because I don't feel like any of that's there.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
that moment is and and well you have to understand too this right your your body like the accident right it is it could be the most excruciating pain that someone could go through right it's just 38 broken bones my eyeballs out of my head i'm looking at my eye i'm looking at my twisted legs in all these things but i'm like the pain is like really not that bad your body kind of shuts it
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
shuts it down, it's like overload, right? It's just a small part in the front of your brain where you feel pain, right? So you can kind of control that as well. And so it's interesting. Fuck, I got lost because I got so many from that accident in my brain. I get a little sidetracked.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I mean, I was in control of my breath. And that's all I had to focus on. Because if you can't breathe, then nothing else is going to matter. So I had to focus on exhaling so I could then inhale. And I had a popped lung and all this stuff I didn't know.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
No, it rolled completely over me. And then it... Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it was brutal. Right. But, yeah, just conscious breath. Conscious breath was pretty important. And, you know, like you said, there's nothing to freaking worry about at the end of the day. You know, and I can confirm that. We all have something to look forward to, whether we use God to get there, right, or whatever it is.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
But it's something to look forward to, and it's blissful, and it's beautiful. And, yeah. There's accountability and responsibility that comes along with it. And you take it all with you, man.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
You're connected. You're connected all the time to all you want to be connected to.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
i think everyone is conspiring to keep my life lean and keep the white noise out it's um i feel that life is a lot easier even though on paper it's it's much more difficult to not to spend hours just so i can walk every day you know i have to do all this stuff still Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm in, I'm in, I'm in good shape, but it's too, I don't have pain.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Um, I have to do a bunch of stuff and who cares? I'm still walking. Right. They told me I wasn't going to walk, but I think, um, my life being so lean and, and it's, uh, been the best gift.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
No, yeah, it wasn't really a guy that did. But, again, it's one of those sort of confirmation kind of things. Right. The things that were working for me before, I really just doubled down on. And whether, like, spending time with those. It's like you, Jason, how much you love your family and want to spend time with your family.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
And asking for help. Now I'm really good at asking for help because, Jesus Christ, I needed all the help I can get. That's great. So I have no problem asking for help. And I spend so much time on myself and self-care. Look, I have hydrogen water and all these shots. I got liposomal glutathione right here. I got all this stuff. I'm doing so many good things for my body.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Like, life is just wonderful because, again, it's so clean and simple. I love that.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, well, my dad is a theologist, and so I studied all religions growing up. Oh, wow, that's cool.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Studied them all, and I found them all interesting. Organized religions never end up being my bag, but I think because of it. Yeah. But I do believe that in anything that... Believe in anything that makes you a better person, a more thoughtful person, a conscious person. Yeah. I think that's great. Amen. So I've got no problems with religion. In general.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
So I land, look, at some point in my recovery, I know I had to give up my body to the EMTs and the people when I was on the ice for 45 minutes, right? Just struggling for my next breath, and that's where I passed. And they had to jam a needle in my chest and do all that stuff, inflate my lung. I gave myself up. to them just have to work on whatever they had to do to get me to survive.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
But I think there's all, because also those, I knew the guy that was working on me and he called one of my best friends who's a firefighter. He says, you're going to want to get to the hospital because I just took off on a MedEvac flight to the hospital. And he called my buddy who's a firefighter. He's like, I just worked on Jeremy. I just want to say we did the best we could.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
And he's like, there's no way Smoker's going to make it. So he went to the hospital and said, you want to get there, go be with his sister or whatever and You know, when those guys say, you don't have a chance, right? So I think there's some fucking divine intervention is the shortest. I don't know what it is, guys. I don't know. There is no answer to that.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I think the divine intervention is fucking thoughts and prayers, if you will, from others. It's the will of those doctors. They're like, look at this motherfucker. We're going to work extra hard. Or die, whatever. Like, my will, right? My will is fucking... It's strong, let me just say that.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
And I think there's others... That energy goes into others that would help... All those EMTs and the firefighters that were there saving my ass, and Sheriff's Department, all those guys that were there to save my ass, right? All connected. Yeah, it's all connected, man. So as hard as I was working, I think that bleeds into others, and they worked harder, and I think every...
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
you know, flower that came in, every nurse that, you know, changed a bit, whatever the heck it is, man, that's all like love and all working towards surviving. And let that be divine, the collective divinity of humans, right? Which I think is fucking brilliant and good. The energy of human.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
And I think that's what the divine intervention is ultimately. I don't think it's some God or some guy coming down on a carpet or whatever. It's none of these kind of things. I just think it's an energetic thing. And I can define it as love. You know, that's maybe what divine intervention is for me. That helps me survive. I think that fucking continues, right?
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Us just sitting here talking about it, I'm sure thoughts of thoughts are swirling in all of our heads as we're talking, right?
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Well, I think it's, you know, I was very terrified to get... Because to do like fucking fiction, I'm still trying to live in reality. I'm trying to live, right? So it was a hard line for me to cross.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, wow, man. It was a big stretch. It was very... very challenging for me mentally to get over that hump. And I still struggle with it sometimes. I don't take it super seriously. I'm in a character that I can do very well, and I know the show very well, so it was easy for me to kind of slide back into it. But if it was a very challenging role, I couldn't have taken it.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Not challenging in the sense of, because this movie, the show's challenging, but it's that, if I had to go play Dahmer or something, like something so far from me.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, I just don't have the energy for it. I don't have the fuel. I have so much fuel to put into like this reality, this body, all this stuff. I can't just go play make believe right now. because it takes a lot of time to get right here every day just so I can have a positive thought, so I can progress, so I can always keep growing. Well, listen to me.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I'm writing one right now, and I'm just going to spend the whole summer doing it. Hopefully I can get it out maybe by the year's end or beginning of next year. Amazing. But having experiences like this, I speak to a lot of different people, always something new comes out and I always learn something new in the process and the questions.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, yeah, it's wonderful gifts. And it'll be, you know, something passed on, I'll have with you guys forever, right? It'll, our exchanges will always have a basis of this, a wink, a wink to knowing the, to the knowingness of something. Right.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
And, and we can laugh at all the jokes you want and fart and do all, you know, go play golf terribly and wherever it is, but we know that there's a, there's an underlying current of,
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Well, thanks, brother. That means it's just a shared experience then, right?
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
What's up, man? I wish we were all together, actually. I know, right? I haven't seen some faces on the screen, but it's nice to hear you guys.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Right here in the heart. Right here in the heart. I didn't see where you were pointing. I just realized something.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, that was a really random thing. I actually ended up doing that show because I did Dahmer already. And we shot that movie in two weeks for like $100,000. So I didn't know what was going to happen with this tiny little movie. So I did it to kind of promote that. But then in,
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
it turned into like this little Cinderella story because that movie came out and then I got like, you know, William Morris, all these things happened. And then, like you said, the audition for SWAT and all these other movies started coming as like this sort of Cinderella story for a breaking actor, you know, in Hollywood.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
It'd be hard to kind of catch that. Does anybody know when... you're gonna break or have any sort of, right?
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, yeah. I don't know where exactly that comes from. I know for me, it was being very clear and focused on what I wanted. and also what I didn't want. Early on, like I had did a lot of comedy stuff and I'm like, God, it wasn't trying to go down that road. And I ended up, that's why Domino was a great turning point for me to kind of go into darker sort of deeper sort of,
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
character roles, and I just was just kind of clear. And then if I didn't connect to it, there's an easy no, no matter how much money. I've turned down more money than I'll ever make in life because I never did something for money. That's great. And you have to be okay with yourself in that. In order to say no to money, like mind you,
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I mean, I think even during that It Factors show, I was turning down a lot of money and I had no power. I had no running freaking water. I thought you meant Hollywood power. But I'm living on $5 a month to eat. Like it's yum yum donuts. You know, you get like 13 donut holes, 14 donut holes for 99 cents. I'm crushing those for two weeks. You know, donut hole a day. It's brutal, dude.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
But, you know, that when you know you're... Sean's pants are getting crowded right now. You know your limits, right? You know you're allowing yourself to go. It's like, all right, well, I don't have to say yes to something just for money. And so it gives me the power in the ball to note things.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I feel like the calendar filled up pretty quickly. I don't know. What was next? Was the town next? There's a town, yeah, was next. Was it Mission Impossible? There was Mission Impossible. Avengers was booked, but it was shot later. And then it was Bourne. And then there was Hansel and Gretel. And then there was Mission Impossible. So it was like all that happened probably within –
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
you know six months so those and so they're all for the most part franchises if you will so like i'm kind of kind of booked up and so they all got scheduled so your next basically your three four years five years is booked yeah it was like four four years was yeah jammed up i i was i was gone for for four years wow how did you deal with that with with being away from home living out of out of a suitcase i mean that's all and all the fame too like that transition talk to us about that
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Well, it's actually interesting because, you know, I was kind of very excited to have the opportunities. And by the time, Bourne was the last thing that kind of came my way. And I had already signed on to Avengers. That's, you know, how many a decade of your life. You have to sign on for it. It doesn't mean you're going to do it, but you sign on for it, right?
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
so that that's what i was having a conversation with with the team right so i'm like am i doing this am i really doing this yeah and then same with um mission impossible you know i talk with tom's like all right well we're gonna do three of these i'm like okay well there's i'm so my whole decade's booked for the most part right and then born comes around and it's like oh wow i really creatively obviously love to do this yeah i love there's involved love with with matt um he what he did with it and
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
But I had to really pause and say, let me think about this here. I'm kind of jammed up already. And this is also on the face of the thing too, kind of different than Mission Impossible. It's much more Tom and this type of thing. So it was a quick 24-hour sort of thinking session on it, but I had to take pause on it. And all of that's very exciting, but I knew I gave up a decade of my life.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
You can consider it, right? That's all you can do is consider it. And it's like, you're an idiot to say no to these things. They're amazing opportunities. They're all quality franchises, if you will.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, at what cost? It will be something that will be determined later, you know? Yeah. And I knew I was going to miss a lot, but I knew that there was an end to it, right? Yeah, right. So I'm like, let me go, let me give it a go. And yeah, don't get me wrong, there were times where most of the time it was amazing. Most of the time it was really great. You hadn't become a dad yet, right?
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, I wasn't a dad yet. And so that's why I can have a really good time. I was a single guy. I can just go out and just focus on work and see the world, right? And get paid to be in shape and all these amazing things. Amazing things, right? It was fantastic. But I did miss my family that I'm very deeply close with. It's very large. So I had like four birthdays in a row with my assistant.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I'm on January 7th, and he was January 8th. And he's exactly a decade younger than me. That's so funny. So we just celebrated our birthdays together like in a Ferrari in Abu Dhabi. Going to an F1. Yeah. That's great. I mean, you know. Oh, my God.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
I don't know. It was a great thing, but you don't know what will come down the road. It's a wonderful blessings. And, you know, the perspective to take from that, I mean, I'd do the same thing all over again, you know.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Well, initially, I think the... The main difference is just craft services.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
Yeah, it's in the trailer size. But yeah, it does take longer. You know, a lot of it is like in the prep too for anything that's not physical. When it's those physical movies, there's so much... you know, it's months and months of physical prep before you go do it.
SmartLess
"Jeremy Renner"
So then while you're doing it, you're training like an athletic team or an athletic sport. Yeah.