Jeremy Renner has opened up on the 'tiny but monumental slip of the mind' that changed his life and led to him being crushed by a snowplough and almost dying.
On New Year's Day 2023, the actor had been helping his nephew Alex retrieve a vehicle that had been stranded by a snow storm near his home in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Renner ended up being run over by his own snowplough, and suffered serious injuries after being crushed by the incredibly heavy vehicle.
He was airlifted to hospital in a 'critical but stable condition' with over 30 broken bones, including several ribs, both of his legs, his right shoulder, an eye socket and his mandible.
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Doctors later told the actor he came 'within millimetres of hitting a vital organ or major nerve', which could have killed him, and it was nevertheless a long road to recovery for Renner.
Police said that the actor had 'attempted to stop or divert' the snowplough to protect his nephew when he was 'pulled under the vehicle by the track and run over.'
Renner has opened up on the moment disaster struck in his book My Next Breath, and in an excerpt published in The Times he explained the 'tiny' error he made which almost cost him his life.
He wrote: "We were working on the long, winding driveway that climbs to an expansive parking area in front of my house.
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"I was in the cab of the snowcat, and Alex was on the ground attaching the Ford truck to the back of the snowcat with chains. We started pulling the truck out of the snow and got it unstuck.
"Alex went to unlatch it from the snowcat as I started to turn the snowcat around. But its snowblade was up high and I couldn’t quite see Alex, who was somewhere in front of me. I got out of the driver’s seat and stepped on the tracks to talk to him.
"'Before exiting the driver’s cab! — Apply parking brake,' the manual says. But I didn’t engage the parking brake, or disengage the steel tracks.
"In that moment — an innocent, critical, life-changing moment — that tiny but monumental slip of the mind would change the course of my life for ever."
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Renner explained that the snowcat 'began to slide on the icy asphalt towards Alex', and to his horror he realised his nephew was going to be crushed between the plough and another vehicle.
The actor said he tried to jump across the snowcat's tracks and try to get back into the cabin and hit the 'stop' button, which he now realises was 'an impossible thing to have attempted' as his 'feet lost their grip on the moving tracks'.
He fell to the ground, hitting his head and then 'there came terrible crunching sounds as 14,000lb of galvanised steel machinery slowly, inexorably, monotonously, ground over my body.'
Alex had heard his uncle shout and got into the vehicle they were working on, protected from the plough by the truck's cabin, so he had time to react and get out of the way.
My Next Breath releases on 29 April.
Joe Harker