How being crushed by a 14,000lb snowplough made Jeremy Renner a nicer person: ‘I’ve never been more vulnerable, open and loving’ | Jeremy Renner

Six ribs damaged in 14 locations. Three breaks within the decrease pelvis. Proper and left ankle damaged. Left tibia damaged. Left wrist fractured. Left toes, three breaks. Proper clavicle damaged. Proper shoulder blade cracked. Eye socket, jaw, mandible, all damaged. Main laceration again of head. Lung collapsed. Liver pierced from rib bone. The stock of Jeremy Renner’s accidents, documented by the twice Oscar-nominated film star himself, was exhaustive. It was a miracle that the actor had survived; he had no proper to. Renner had been crushed by his personal 14,000lb (6,350kg) snowplough on New Yr’s Day 2023. A neighbour who helped him on the scene believes he died momentarily. So does Renner. He tells me it was a really particular second.“What I skilled once I handed was this collective divinity and exquisite, highly effective peace. It’s the most exhilarating peace you possibly can ever really feel. It’s the best adrenaline rush. The whole lot stopped … perhaps for 30 seconds, perhaps a minute. It was definitive for me. All of it made good sense.” Does he consider in God? “No. My dad’s a theologist and I studied all religions rising up, so I steer away from religions.”In the present day, Renner is sitting in entrance of me in a London lodge, very a lot alive, wanting match, flawless and grateful. He’s written a memoir, My Subsequent Breath. It’s not merely the story of surviving in opposition to all odds, it’s the story of a person who discovered a brand new sense of objective in extremis. “Being right here to speak about my e-book is so completely different from having to speak about Mission: Inconceivable!” he says earlier than he’s even sat down. What’s the distinction? “Nicely, we’d be speaking about stunts and the enjoyment of being in an enormous motion film with one of many greatest stars round, Tom Cruise.”Nevertheless a lot enthusiasm he tries to muster for chatting concerning the Mission: Inconceivable franchise, it’s apparent which topic he prefers. “The large distinction is fiction and nonfiction. I’ve an actual difficulty now with fiction. I don’t have a lot time in my life for it, having come again from such a reasonably harrowing expertise of actual actuality. I’ve to concentrate on actuality despite the fact that I play make-believe for a residing. I’ve to essentially consider in my restoration to stroll once more proper and to breathe once more proper and to like and … expertise … and …” He trails off, a fog of phrases disappearing into the ether.Has that created an existential disaster – being an actor who doesn’t wish to act? “I had a battle with that, as a result of a yr in the past my actual battle was with simply strolling, proper? I needed to focus a lot vitality simply on strolling.” He mumbles some extra – suppose Elvis in Vegas. I catch half-sentences about making sequence two and three of the Mayor of Kingstown, wherein he performs rock-hard powerbroker Mike McLusky, studying to belief his physique once more, getting used to the actual world.Renner posts a selfie from his hospital mattress days after his accident in January 2023. {Photograph}: Jeremy Renner InstagramRenner is a basic mumblecore actor. Not fairly the complete Brando, however he’s good. In movies it offers him a straightforward naturalism and, typically, a scary authenticity. In an interview state of affairs, whenever you’re hanging on to each phrase, it may be irritating. It’s not shocking that he was forged as a superhero in The Avengers movies and its spin-off TV sequence Hawkeye. He appears like one – small, robust, compact; a nine-volt battery of a person. In so many motion pictures, he performs the hardest in a bunch of toughies. Regardless of his measurement, he’s the one whom the massive man messes with at his peril. Renner’s characters are sometimes reckless adrenaline junkies on the cusp of loopy.He’s the primary individual to confess that regardless of enormous success taking part in these rock-hard superheroes, rock-hard navy males (The Damage Locker, which earned him a finest actor Oscar nomination in 2010), rock-hard criminals (The City, which gained him a finest supporting Oscar nomination a yr later), rock-hard black ops brokers (The Bourne Legacy) and rock-hard analysts (Mission: Inconceivable), he wasn’t the happiest of bunnies. He typically grumbled about his work, hated being away from his daughter Ava, and had lately been concerned in a humiliating public divorce wherein all kinds of allegations have been slung at him.For more often than not, he simply wished to be at dwelling enjoyable along with his enormous prolonged household (Renner is the oldest of seven siblings), his associates, and most of all Ava. Which, paradoxically, is what he had been doing when the accident occurred. He had pushed over from his former dwelling within the Hollywood Hills to his residence close to Reno, Nevada, which he calls Camp Renner. This was the place the household would meet to mark particular events and revel in snowboarding and snowboarding.The six-acre property at Lake Tahoe sits 7,300ft above sea degree on a non-public street off the Mount Rose Freeway. Renner renovated the property himself after shopping for it in 2012 (he has had a profitable and satisfying sideline in renovations – or Rennervations, as he calls them – all through his appearing profession). {Photograph}: Sebastian Nevols/The GuardianI simply needed to act. There was no method I used to be going to take that danger and see my nephew’s head on the bottom reduce in half On 30 December 2022, the Tahoe Every day Tribune reported that there could possibly be as much as 5ft of snow and the forecast had been upgraded to a winter storm with gusts presumably exceeding 100mph for Sierra ridges. By 31 December, they’d no cell phone service and no web at Camp Renner, they usually have been snowed in. However with the assistance of his tank-like snowcat, they have been nonetheless hoping to ski on New Yr’s Day. The snowcat is an industrial snow remover – a cab sits above six units of heavy wheels and two units of galvanised metal tracks made up of 76 blades that stretch outward past the physique of the car.It was 6am when Renner jumped into the snowcat. He hoped to clear the driveway and dig out the parked autos. It was an enormous job, so he requested his 27-year-old nephew Alex to assist him. As soon as they have been completed with the driveway, they’d be nice – the primary street had already been ploughed. They’d cleared many of the snow when Renner obtained out of the snowcat to have a phrase with Alex. That’s when the car started to slip on the icy asphalt. Renner realised he hadn’t put the brake on. The snowcat was heading straight for Alex, who was trapped between the monster machine and a pickup truck. The one likelihood to avoid wasting his nephew was to leap throughout the snowcat’s 3ft steel tracks and up into the cab and hit the cease button. He remembers shouting, “Not immediately, motherfucker”, as he thought Alex was about to be crushed to demise. The response of an motion hero.Renner missed the cab. He was catapulted ahead, off the spinning steel tracks, on to the ice. The snowcat continued to cost ahead, and over him. “There got here horrible crunching sounds as 14,000lb of galvanised metal equipment slowly, inexorably, monotonously, floor over my physique. It was a horrifying soundtrack,” he writes in My Subsequent Breath. “Cranium, jaw, cheekbones, molars; fibula, tibia, lungs, eye sockets, skull, pelvis, ulna, legs, arms, pores and skin; crack, snap, crack, squeeze, crack. Extra sounds: a ringing within the ears, as if a large-calibre gun had unloaded subsequent to my head. A sting of shiny white in my eyes – I’m blinded by a coruscating lightning, a lightning that indicators the break of my orbital bone, inflicting my left eyeball to violently burst out of my cranium.”I had a bunch of individuals ready for me to go snowboarding! I didn’t wish to allow them to down. That grew to become such an enormous factor It felt like an eternity, however inside a number of seconds the snowcat had handed over him. It was nonetheless surging ahead, however Alex had managed to get out of its method. Would the snowcat have hit Alex if he’d not intervened? “It’s laborious to say. You’ve not obtained time to make a rational determination. You simply do it. The worst state of affairs is that he’s crushed. So I simply needed to act. There was no method I used to be going to take that danger and see my nephew’s head on the bottom reduce in half. No likelihood. I’m not doing that. I’m not taking the prospect, in order that’s why I’d do it once more in two seconds.”Renner’s nonetheless undecided how he survived. So many elements performed an element. He cites the Lamaze respiration class he went to aged 12 along with his mom when she was pregnant; he went on to make use of the method in auditions or when he was burdened. Renner used to have a placard on the wall in his residence saying “Don’t overlook to breathe”. However on the time of the accident, the act of doing so was excruciating. As he struggled for oxygen, carbon dioxide constructed up in his lungs and bloodstream, and he felt that he was drowning. On the recording of his neighbour’s emergency name you possibly can hear Renner attempting to breathe. Every guttural groan feels like a demise rattle. One method he used was to repeat the expression “hookers, whores and hamburgers” in a mantra-like method, as a result of the huffing of the “H” compelled him to work his lungs.His two neighbours, Wealthy Kovach and Barb Fletcher, whom he had by no means met earlier than, stayed with him, preserving him alive as he lay in a pool of blood. Alex sat on his haunches, holding up Renner’s smashed arm to forestall it flopping into his crushed rib cage and punctured lung and stopping him from respiration. Renner’s left eye had landed on the ice; he may see it with the attention that was nonetheless in its socket. (Amazingly, he may additionally nonetheless see with the attention that was hanging out.) Darkish ideas started to intrude. “Am I going to dwell like I’m in some form of petri dish, a fucking science experiment? Will I simply be a mind inside a ruined physique? A vegetable.” And but a part of him thought if he may simply ease the cramp, he’d have the ability to stroll again to the home.In the meantime, Fletcher held his head and stored speaking to him, determined for him to not lose consciousness. “Simply preserve respiration,” she instructed him. “Simply take shallow breaths. Stick with us. Maintain your eyes open.” It was Fletcher who was holding him when he went clammy and his pores and skin turned green-grey.Renner tells me immediately that a lot of it was right down to willpower. “I used to be bullying my physique into considering it wasn’t that dangerous and my thoughts was overcoming the best odds it’s ever come up in opposition to. My thoughts was saying, ‘Nah!’ It was half stubbornness. ‘I don’t wish to lose this battle, this sport’, however the deeper half, the zoomed-out half, is I had a lot to dwell for. I had a bunch of individuals ready for me to go snowboarding!” He smiles. He is aware of it was a ridiculous factor to be considering, but it surely stored him going. “I didn’t wish to allow them to down. That grew to become such an enormous factor.” {Photograph}: Sebastian Nevols/The GuardianMy mouth remains to be full chaos. It appears nice, however once I chew down it feels as if I’m going to interrupt all my tooth However, in fact, there was extra to it than willpower. Final yr, he launched his second album of largely self-penned songs. Love and Titanium is concerning the accident, and so referred to as as a result of these are one other two issues which have helped him pull via – the love of household and associates, and the titanium that has helped repair all these damaged bones. He was additionally extraordinarily fortunate. No person gave him a lot hope on the time – Alex, Kovach and Fletcher, the medical crew who helicoptered him to hospital, the paramedic who pierced his chest cavity to allow him to breathe extra simply, all thought he was a goner. “That man who impaled my chest to launch the stress was a pal of a pal, and he referred to as my pal after he did it and he stated, ‘We did the very best we may.’”Virtually as superb as his survival was the truth that he solely stayed 12 days in hospital. In actual fact, excessive on morphine and fentanyl, hooked up to drips and unable to stroll, he tried to flee far earlier. “It was the slowest breakout ever,” he says, laughing. As he talks, I’m wanting him up and down for indicators of harm. Nothing. Finally I spot a sublime circle round his ankle. It appears extra like a bracelet than a struggle wound. Is {that a} scar, I ask. He nods. “I’ve a bunch of little scars, however solely from the surgical procedure to avoid wasting my physique. The entire leg is titanium from the knee right down to the ankle.”Is he nonetheless in ache? “My mouth remains to be full chaos.” Let’s take a look, I say. He opens broad, obligingly. “It appears nice, however once I chew down it feels as if I’m going to interrupt all my tooth.”As an actor, Renner was well-known for his athleticism and suppleness. Like Cruise, he did his personal stunts. Are there issues he can now not do? “I don’t know. In my thoughts no, in my physique in all probability. I’m additionally 54. However my thoughts nonetheless thinks I’m 20.”The primary music on Love and Titanium is known as Fortunate Man. “At some point you simply get up / And eventually realise / Life is so god rattling stunning / And I ain’t obtained nothin’ left to lose.” Renner tells me that it took him the accident to grasp simply how stunning life was. Now, he says, he wakes up and is aware of he’s not going to have a foul day. No day alive is a foul day. Nevertheless it didn’t was once like that.Some persons are pure celebrities. Renner isn’t one in every of them. He struggled along with his fame. Within the TV sequence Hawkeye, there’s a scene the place his eponymous superhero is in a public bathroom, and the person peeing subsequent to him asks for a selfie. He says this occurred to him in actual life. At airports, he would typically eat his meals in the bathroom cubicles to keep away from the general public. He loathed the way in which some followers thought they’d a proper to his time no matter he was doing. After which there was the way in which individuals assumed they knew him, although they tended to speak to him as if he was the character they’d final seen him taking part in. He felt it was diminishing. “As a star, you’re a product and also you’re seen as a bunch of various issues. I could be Hawkeye to any person, I could be this to any person else, however I’m nonetheless a person; only a human consuming spaghetti with my daughter.”Renner in TV miniseries Hawkeye, 2021. {Photograph}: Chuck Zlotnick/Picture provided by Capital PicturesWith Tom Cruise in Mission: Inconceivable – Rogue Nation, 2015. {Photograph}: Paramount/Everett/ShutterstockThat’s all modified. He loves the way in which individuals now speak to him as Jeremy Renner, the person who survived a horrible accident. He feels individuals can relate to him, ultimately. We would not have been run over by a 14,000lb snowplough, however all of us have skilled dangerous luck in a single type or one other. “There’s an attractive intimacy and openness and vulnerability and kindness and thoughtfulness I get from individuals now, as an alternative of simply taking their deserved selfie. It’s a unique human trade. I believe it’s given them a pathway. They really feel, ‘He’s a human identical to I’m.’”skip previous e-newsletter promotionSign as much as Inside SaturdayThe solely solution to get a glance behind the scenes of the Saturday journal. Signal as much as get the within story from our prime writers in addition to all of the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox each weekend.Privateness Discover: Newsletters might comprise data about charities, on-line advertisements, and content material funded by outdoors events. For extra data see our Privateness Coverage. We use Google reCaptcha to guard our web site and the Google Privateness Coverage and Phrases of Service apply.after e-newsletter promotionI inform him that I just like the honesty of his e-book. He writes that he was a person who was laborious to like. At instances he comes throughout as grumpy, churlish and delinquent. Has that modified? “I believe all of the components of the recipe that made me are nonetheless there. However I don’t suppose I’ve a lot time to be grumpy now.” Why was he so grumpy? “I was dissatisfied with plenty of issues in my life.” Akin to? “Not having my life!” In what method? “I used to be the one placing all of the obstacles in my method. By obstacles I imply jobs. I used to be wildly profitable, and I wished to reap the benefits of each alternative I’d get. Nevertheless it wasn’t wholesome for a balanced life. 4 birthdays in a row I didn’t see one member of the family. You’re all the time doing superb issues – Avengers, The Bourne Legacy and all these nice massive motion pictures. Superior! However the dissatisfaction was not being with these I really like.”With Anthony Mackie in The Damage Locker, 2008. {Photograph}: Ken Regan/THA/ShutterstockWith Rachel Weisz in The Bourne Legacy, 2012. {Photograph}: Common/Everett/ShutterstockWhy did he preserve doing it if it made him sad? “I knew there was going to be an ending to these items. So I needed to put these franchises because the precedence. I caught hearth from The Damage Locker after which all these nice alternatives got here alongside. It was the Academy Awards two years in a row, my mother was my date, all these nice blessings, and that was nice. However solely when the flicks got here out did I actually get to see my household [for the premieres]. There are 25 of us. A bus has to come back and choose up the household, however I used to be nonetheless lacking out.” And when he wasn’t making motion pictures, he was renovating homes. “I constructed 26 properties in 20 years. And my music was additionally a precedence. So I had all this stuff spinning. I simply know the place my priorities lie now, and nothing can get of their method at this level.”Renner comes throughout as supremely aggressive within the e-book. Within the Nineteen Eighties, his father managed a bowling alley in Modesto, California the place the actor grew up. By the age of 12, he says, he was adequate to bowl in opposition to professionals in a aggressive league. However that wasn’t sufficient for him. He wished to be the very best, and when he wasn’t he went into meltdown. “Self-doubt become hatred, hatred into anger, anger into rage,” he writes. Ultimately, he walked away from bowling.He additionally makes it clear that he all the time expects the very best from these round him. When he feels upset by associates or relations, he’d give them , sharp Renner Speak, “the place I problem individuals to enhance, to commit more durable, to face their failings and be higher, to not be afraid”.He has given himself loads of Renner Talks through the years. All through his 20s he challenged his fears. Something he was terrified of, he took on, whether or not it was concern of success, intimacy, snakes or heights. Within the case of sharks, he obtained a scuba diving licence, then a grasp diver’s licence and went swimming with them. In the end, he says, nothing scared him.Is he as powerful because the characters he performs? “I believe I’m softer.” He mulls it over. “I’ve obtained my mother’s toughness. She has this interior energy, this fortitude.” What concerning the bodily toughness? “Yeah, I get that from her as nicely. She was an athlete. I even have the gentle, curious thoughts of my father.”At instances, you sound terrifying, I say. I learn an interview wherein he talked about having to “choke out” males once they have been inflicting him trouble. He offers me a butter-wouldn’t-melt look and giggles. “The household do like having talent units, like the women love to do wrist locks and know the best way to throw a throat punch. I’ll present them the best way to do this stuff.” However no, he says, he wouldn’t do something violent – in truth, he does the other. “So if any person is appearing hysterical I simply contact them, they usually’re like, what occurred? I get their consideration by touching their throat. It’s like giving somebody a hug once they’re mad at you.” And he gently faucets his throat by means of illustration.I’m a bit flummoxed. Maybe I’m complicated him with any person else. Once I get dwelling, I verify previous interviews with Renner, and positive sufficient there it’s in a 2015 Playboy piece when he says: “This man obtained actually drunk and pushed Julia Stiles, my co-star [in the 2005 movie A Little Trip to Heaven]. I kindly choked him out and remedied the state of affairs. I’ve additionally needed to choke individuals out as a result of they pushed my mother or knocked my sister down, however I’ve by no means felt like a badass.” {Photograph}: Sebastian Nevols/The GuardianRenner is legendary for outre feedback. In 2015, he and Jennifer Lopez offered the very best actor in a tv mini-series award on the Golden Globes. Lopez provided to open the envelope. “You need me to do it? I’ve the nails,” she stated to Renner. “You bought the globes, too,” he replied, gazing her chest. Whereas many individuals on social media lambasted him for the remark, he instructed Playboy: “Really, Jennifer thought it was fucking humorous and obtained a bit sweaty and perhaps even turned on by the entire expertise. Different individuals began working their mouths about it. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, however I can’t be bothered. We gave zero fucks.”In 2019, Renner met extra controversy when court docket custody filings grew to become public. The actor Sonni Pacheco, 20 years his junior, filed for divorce in 2014 after they’d been married for 10 months, however particulars of their long-running custody battle didn’t emerge until 5 years later. Pacheco requested for sole custody, saying Renner was an “unfit dad or mum”. She claimed he had talked about killing her after which taking his personal life, and that he had bitten Ava’s shoulder. Renner described the allegations as “dramatisations” made with a “particular aim in thoughts” and denied biting Ava, saying the mark was from a automotive seatbelt that “pinched” her.Different individuals supplied statements in assist of Pacheco. There have been claims that he had put out traces of cocaine on a toilet counter inside Ava’s attain and left her unsupervised for hours. One lady admitted to having a threesome with him, and says she noticed him go out drunk. She stated she was shocked when she found that Ava had been in the home on a regular basis, at one level coming down the steps to search for him. One other stated she’d seen him put a gun in his mouth and hearth it on the ceiling.Within the e-book, he describes himself as a “cranky, cynical, grubby cat motherfucker”. We’ve heard concerning the crankiness. The place does the cynicism come from? Spending too lengthy on the east coast, he says. “I believe it’s the place innocence will get misplaced or weathered. It’s like east coasters may have extra of a psychological toughness and their sense of humour is rougher across the edges. Extra aggressive. You bust one another’s balls, that form of factor.” And what concerning the “grubby cat motherfucker?” He bursts out laughing. “The phrase alone makes me giggle. I don’t take myself very critically. No matter stress I’ve had in life I’ve tried to discover a method of laughing via it. And that’s the place typically cynicism comes out – you suppose, I’m simply going to have fun at these items.” What stuff? “Being accused of stuff you’ve not completed, proper? That doesn’t really feel good to anyone. It definitely doesn’t really feel good whenever you’re a star and it’s identified to all people.”Are you speaking concerning the allegations within the media on the time of the divorce? “Yeah. Yeah.” Is there any reality in them? “No, they usually occur on a regular basis. It’s  all of the salaciousness that occurs on the market. It’s clickbait, and it hurts my emotions and it dehumanises individuals.”To be honest, I say, you do sound as for those who have been a celebration animal. He offers me one other butter-wouldn’t-melt look. I point out the tales of threesomes, medication and boozing. “That’s not likely my fashion,” he says. Actually? “Folks say no matter.” Then he begins to elucidate. “Look, I dwell a carnival-type life. I don’t dwell a traditional life. The quantity of journey I’ve completed, all the time residing in a suitcase.” And when he was dwelling in LA, he says, he didn’t exit as a result of he was too well-known, so he socialised at dwelling. “The place in LA was the place I used to be elevating my youngster, the place everybody realized to trip a motorbike and swim. I additionally had my music there. I had my conferences there. It was my courting life. It was my membership. It was my dwelling. It was all of the issues that embody somebody’s life. If you meet an individual and seize a pint, as an alternative of assembly up at a pub, I’d simply do it at my home. It was like an open-door coverage for all my household and associates. It was nice for them. In order that’s not a traditional dwelling. Properties aren’t normally like that or run like that method. In order that’s now not.” The way in which he describes it, it was each a nursery and an evening membership, and typically little distinction was made between the 2.That’s the occasion way of life I used to be speaking about, I say. “Yeah, yeah. Internet hosting. I simply obtained uninterested in internet hosting. And all of the clean-up. Hehehe! So by 2019 I used to be uninterested in all that. Covid got here round and helped me bounce that each one out. I simply wished to sluggish down.”How did he really feel when the allegations emerged? “It doesn’t matter to me what individuals say,” he says earlier than the query is totally out. “They’re saying it for their very own causes and never for the correct causes or the reality. And I’m used to that, as a result of I’m a public determine. I don’t learn individuals’s evaluations, I don’t learn individuals’s feedback. I don’t care. That’s not a part of my life.”Ava clearly means a lot to him. He now has joint custody with Pacheco, and the e-book is devoted to his daughter (“my lifeforce … my the whole lot, my solely factor, my primary”). I ask if he feared dropping her within the custody battle. “That’s simply attorneys speaking. That’s attorneys arguing. The custody was straightforward.” After which he says one thing shocking. “Her mother and I get alongside very nicely, and we’re in one another’s lives. It’s pretty.” Wow, I say – I had no thought. “Yeah, yeah,” he says, enthusiastically. I’ve by no means learn that earlier than, I say, inform me about it. “Nicely that’s as a result of it’s nobody’s enterprise. It’s nobody’s enterprise.” True, I say, however you then simply learn the horror tales. He softens. “It’s nice. She’s obtained a brand new child and he or she sends me stunning photos.” {Photograph}: Sebastian Nevols/The GuardianThat’s the place the accident’s actually shifted my focus. I can nonetheless go to work, however my main focus is to provide again and assist in any method I canHas he at present obtained a associate? “No, not in the intervening time.” (Final yr, it was reported that he was courting CC Mason, a vogue journalist 28 years his junior.) A relationship isn’t a precedence in the intervening time, he says. “I’m fairly centered on my daughter and the inspiration for the children.” The inspiration, additionally referred to as RennerVation, supplies assist for at-risk kids and people in foster care. Shortly earlier than the accident, he made a Disney+ sequence about his challenge renovating old fashioned buses to fulfill a group’s wants, and out of that got here the nonprofit basis.Relatively than appearing, this appears now to be his life’s mission. “That’s the place the accident’s actually shifted my focus. I can nonetheless go to work, however my main focus is to provide again and assist in any method I can. That’s far more fulfilling than the rest I’ve completed, outdoors mentioning my very own youngster. With the ability to put a smile on these children’ faces and share that pleasure with them and share the expansion, I can’t consider something extra rewarding.”He feels a lot extra at one with the world, he says. Take the e-book. The very last thing the previous Renner would have wished to do is share such a traumatic expertise. However the accident has led him into a unique mind-set, and now he couldn’t be happier he’s written the e-book. “It compelled me to get out of my very own method of being non-public and a recluse to share one thing.” You’ve been compelled again into the actual world? “Yeah. I’ve by no means been extra related and extra open and extra weak and extra loving. And I’ve by no means obtained extra goodwill. That connection was buried deep, deep, deep in my soul, beforehand, however now it’s on the forefront. It’s all that issues to me.” He takes a deep breath – lengthy, leisurely and content material. “It’s an honour to be alive,” he says. My Subsequent Breath by Jeremy Renner is printed by Simon & Schuster (£22). To assist the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Supply expenses might apply.