Jeremy Renner Shares Motivation To Write ‘My Next Breath’

The date was January 1, 2023. The news spread like wildfire. Jeremy Renner, a beloved award-winning actor, had been run over by a snowplow and wasn’t expected to survive. Prayers flooded social media. Devastation ripped through Hollywood. Some were preparing for the worst. Many held out hope. Jeremy was just focused on breathing. The actor delves into the momentum that kept him alive in his memoir, My Next Breath. 

In many respects, Renner credits his daughter for inspiring him throughout the recovery process. The 9-year-old wrote a letter to her dad in which she expressed happiness about him driving to pick her up from school months after the accident. 

“She was my fuel to get better,” Renner told CBS during a recent interview. “She gets better if I get better. All I have to do is get better for her.”

Jeremy Renner has taken his recovery one step at a time in the same way he treated survival on New Year’s Day 2023. The actor was clearing his driveway of snow when his snowplow slipped and slid towards him. Renner was crushed under the 14,000-pound machine for 45 minutes until help arrived. 

“Your body is lit up and you’re drowning, you’re on fire, and being struck by lightning all at once,” the actor said of the near-death experience. “I wasn’t going to breathe, it didn’t matter my eyeballs were out of my head and my legs were all twisted up like a pretzel. I’ll worry about that later. You gotta breathe first.”

Some individuals survive life-threatening experiences and eagerly share how they made it through such ordeals. Jeremy Renner was initially hesitant to share his story with the world. 

“I didn’t want to write it,” the actor said of his reluctance to write his memoir. “I just don’t think it was valuable in my life because I lived it,” he added. “It was a private incident that happened in my driveway. Why does anybody care about it?”

Renner changed his mind after seeing the value in sharing his story of survival with the world. “Getting out of your own way is important to achieving, getting anything you want in your life,” he explained to CBS. “That’s the lesson I had to learn,” the actor continued. “It was silly of me not to share it.”

My Next Breath is available online and at bookstores nationwide.