Jeremy Renner refuses to be "haunted" by his snowplough accident.
In an interview special with Diane Sawyer on Thursday night, the Avengers actor revealed that he was crushed by his snowplough outside of his Reno, Nevada home on 1 January because he made a mistake while trying to save his 27-year-old nephew Alex.
After using the machine to pull Alex's car out of the snow, the plough began to slide on the ice. Renner stuck one foot out of the plough's cab to look for Alex and lost his footing and fell out of the cab. He tried to jump back in to switch it off but was dragged underneath by the machine's moving track.
"I just happened to be the dummy standing on the dang track a little bit, seeing if my nephew was there. You shouldn't be outside the vehicle when you're operating it, you know what I mean? It's like driving a car with one foot out of the car," Renner said, reports Variety. "But it is what it was. And it's my mistake, and I paid for it.
"That's when I screamed, by the way, when I went under the thing. 'Not today, motherf**ker!' is what I screamed. Sorry for the language."
The 52-year-old was awake through every moment of his ordeal and can remember all of the pain he experienced.
"It felt like someone took the wind out of you. Too many things are going on in the body to feel pain, it's everything. It's like if your soul could have pain," he added.
Renner's lung collapsed and he broke eight ribs in 14 places, his right knee, right ankle, left tibia, left ankle, right clavicle, right shoulder, eye socket and jaw. His rib cage and eye socket were rebuilt with metal plates and screws, his jaw was fixed with rubber bands and screws and he has a titanium rod in his leg.
His injuries were so serious that he wrote down "last words to my family" on his phone, asking them to let him go if he had to be supported by a machine for the rest of his life.
While the accident was caused by his mistake, Renner told Sawyer he had no regrets and would do it all over again.
"I refuse to have that be a trauma and be a negative experience. That is a man that I'm proud of, because I wouldn't let that happen to my nephew. I shift the narrative of being victimised, or making a mistake, or anything else. I refuse to be f**king haunted by that memory that way," he stated.
