Jeremy Renner: ‘I’d rather go to jail’ with Robert Downey Jr. than ‘do something amazing by myself’
Avengers assemble.
Jeremy Renner, 53, opened up about his friendship with his fellow “Avengers” Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. in an interview with Men’s Health, which was published earlier this week.
“Oh, f–k yeah, it’s a real thing — it’s not just for Instagram,” Renner said about his friendship with his co-stars.
“We have a family chat and have for a long time,” he said. “When you work with people — look, we all went through a culturally significant experience together. And there’s divorces and marriages and babies; a lot of stuff happened in these 12 years.”
Renner — who has a daughter with his ex-wife, model Sonni Pacheco — played Hawkeye in various installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including 2012’s “The Avengers” and 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame,” plus “Captain America: Civil War” and “Black Widow,” and his own series, “Hawkeye.”
Renner added, “In the films, we look like we’re at a costume party, and there’s ridiculous props and we’re doing these ridiculous things, but it’s also beautiful because we’re all connected.”
He continued, “There’s a brotherhood or sisterhood or whatever the heck you want to call it. I just call it love. I love every one of them. I’d rather go to jail with Downey than go do something amazing by myself. I’d rather get in a car crash with Evans.”
Earlier in the year, Chris Hemsworth told GQ UK that the “Avengers” group chat was very active immediately after Renner’s near-fatal January 2023 accident, when he was hospitalized with over 30 broken bones after a snowplow ran him over.
“We were all on our ‘Avengers’ text chain, we were all chatting. And it was wild,” Hemsworth recalled.
“None of us really knew how serious it was. I think anything like that, it’s an immediate realization of, ‘Wow, any of us can go at any minute,’” the “Thor” actor said.
Renner also opened up about his harrowing ordeal to Men’s Health.
“I remember my head cracking on the thing and it just pressing on me — it’s exactly like you think it would feel. An immovable object and a crushing force, and something’s gotta give. But thank God my skull didn’t fully give,” he recalled. “And then it kept going … Cheekbone broke, eye socket broke … There was no breathing happening.”
About his stay in the ICU, he said, “What a f–king disaster, dude. Showering, going to the bathroom — everything was a disaster.”
He added, “They give you medications so you don’t go to the bathroom, so you get constipated. And you pee in a jar. It was awful. That’s when you know things aren’t going great — you’re peeing in a plastic jug. It took me 17 minutes to get out of bed. I was happy to sometimes sit up and push myself into a chair and move a little bit. But a shower — everything took like half a day.”
Renner called his family “gangster” for their support following the accident. “They’ll murder people for me, my family,” he said.
The actor’s family is so large that it’s hard to even keep track of all of his nieces’ and nephews’ names.
“No joke. I’m like, ‘Who the f–k’s this one?’ … I’m not letting anybody get hurt on my watch. That’s why I put my f–kin’ own life on the line for my nephew. I’m not gonna let that thing f–king crush him!” he said, referring to the snowplow.
Scarlett Johansson recently told Variety that she was “so f–king happy” to see Renner amid his recovery.
“I didn’t know if I was ever going to see him again … He’s a very spiritual person in general and a very soulful person. And you can see that in his work,” she told the outlet. “And I just was so happy to see that he is full of life and light, and he’s also hilarious. We laughed a lot.”
The “Black Widow” star added that the “Avengers” text chain started joking about Renner “beating us all,” since recovering from his ordeal was “real superhero stuff.”
Speaking to Vanity Fair earlier this year, Downey said that Evans’ secret wedding to Portuguese actress Alba Baptista, 26, was one of the first public outings where the “Avengers” cast gathered together with Renner post-accident.
“If there’s one characteristic we’d all agree is paramount, it’s resilience,” Downey said. “To see Renner embody that literally, and in the context of what was basically a Portuguese American wedding, was mind-blowing. Fully recovered and ready to celebrate. So, yes — miracles happen.”
