Olivia Burke
Marvel star Jeremy Renner has revealed what happened when his heart 'bottomed out' and he briefly 'died' after his horror snowplow accident.
The 54-year-old believes he fleetingly passed away during the dramatic incident in January 2023 while waiting for emergency responders to reach his home in the US' Sierra Nevada mountains.
He sustained a gruesome array of injuries, including more than 30 broken bones, while doctors later told the actor he came 'within millimetres of hitting a vital organ or major nerve'.
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This would have proved fatal - but incredibly, Renner came back from the brink on that fateful New Year's Day two years ago, although he is adamant that he 'died' on his own driveway at one point.
The Town actor was mowed down by his own 14,000-pound snowplow while trying to save his nephew, Alex, from the same fate.
Detailing the devastating accident in his new memoir, My Next Breath, Renner described his memories of those near-fatal moments in excruciating detail.
"Six f**king wheels, seventy-six steel blades, 14,000 pounds of machine, all ranged against one human body," he wrote, as per Page Six.
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"I hear all the bones crack... skull, jaw, cheekbones, molars: fibula, tibia, lungs, eye sockets, cranium, pelvis, ulna, legs, arms, skin, crack, snap, crack, squeeze."
But as he lay paralysed in pain in the snow, Renner admitted he didn't realise what a 'hot mess his body was in' - when in fact, his 'collapsed rib cage and broken and dislocated shoulder and collarbone had worked to compress his lung to the point of suffocation'.
As well as this, Renner told how his left eyeball 'violently burst out of his skull' after the orbital bone surrounding his eye socket was broken, adding: "I could see my left eye with my right eye."
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His battered body was also battling against the 'killing cold' which was gripping Reno, Nevada, at that time of year, as he waited for paramedics to arrive.
In My Next Breath, the California-born star revealed that he felt unable to fight for his life anymore after more than half an hour lay on the icy ground.
"As I lay on the ice, my heart rate slowed, and right there, on that New Year’s Day, unknown to my daughter, my sisters, my friends, my father, my mother, I just got tired," Renner wrote in a poignant passage.
"After about 30 minutes on the ice, of breathing manually for so long, an effort akin to doing 10 or 20 push-ups per minute for half an hour...that’s when I died. I died, right there on the driveway to my house."
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Renner explained that his nephew and a neighbour both recalled him turning a 'grey-green colour' before he then closed his eyes.
"I know I died - in fact, I’m sure of it," the Oscar-nominee wrote, while explaining that paramedics told him his 'heart rate had bottomed out at 18', which he said meant he was 'basically dead'.
Renner also revealed what he saw during the moments where he fleetingly died and the 'exhilarating peace' which overwhelmed him at this point.
"When I died, what I felt was energy, a constantly connected, beautiful and fantastic energy," he said.
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"There was no time, place, or space, and nothing to see, except a kind of electric, two-way vision made from strands of that inconceivable energy.
"I could see my lifetime. I could see everything all at once. In death there was no time, no time at all, yet it was also all time and forever."
Renner says he eventually felt something urging him not to 'let go', which brought him back - although it was touch and go for a minute there.
Now, he sees his revival as a 'glory moment', saying in his new book: "I didn’t f***ing die. So the celebration of New Year becomes a recognition of the depth of the love in our family."
My Next Breath is available from today (29 April).