Jeremy Renner Has Only Seen Two ‘Avengers’ Films and “Didn’t Care About” Winning an Oscar
Jeremy Renner (Mayor of Kingstown, The Avengers, Hawkeye) told the fourth edition of the Red Sea International Film Festival (RSIFF) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday that he didn’t really care about winning an Oscar, enjoys working with Tom Cruise, Ben Affleck, Kathryn Bigelow, and Taylor Sheridan, and shared that he is in the final stages of work on a book about his snowplow accident.
The star, who suffered a horrific snowplow accident on New Year’s Day nearly two years ago that shattered 38 bones, discussed his career and more in a wide-ranging on-stage appearance at Culture Square in the second-largest Saudi city’s old town Al-Balad.
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“I am forever grateful for all the love and support” he received during his recovery, and happy to have overcome adversity and returned from death, he shared about the accident, joking: “I’m 25 percent titanium, so fuck Iron Man.” He also said that a book he is writing about the experience is in the final editing stage.
Renner said he doesn’t usually watch his own movies but saw the first Avengers movie and half of Avengers: Endgame because on set cast members of action-packed superhero movies don’t see any of the CGI-created scenes. “You want to see what’s really going on there,” he quipped.
Renner also talked about how the original Avengers cast members (Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo) have become some of his best friends. Known for playing the Marvel archer Hawkeye, he recalled that when he was young, he wanted to be like Spider-Man before later wanting to be The Hulk.
“I remember they wanted to do a 10-year sort of deal. I’m like: ‘I don’t know, at 50 years old, do you want to be in tights, dude? This is not a good look. I don’t think anybody wants to see me at 50 in tights’.”
But it ended up “being one of the more beautiful experiences I’ve had, playing Clint Barton and then finding five of my best friends I can just spend the next 12 years of my life with – going through marriages and divorces and kids and ups and downs in our lives, and experience a lot,” the actor said. “And the Avengers is a real thing. We all got tattoos together, and it’s the A6 symbol, and we all got it on different parts of our body.””
Asked about his next big film, he lauded the fellow cast members of his upcoming movie Knives Out 3, again led by Daniel Craig.
Awards, including the Academy Awards, are not a big focus for him, according. to Renner. How did it feel to get nominated for an Oscar in 2010 for The Hurt Locker and again in 2011 for The Town? “It was a weird feeling. It is like you have arrived. It’s almost a welcoming into a club kind of feeling,” he said, adding that he took his mother to the ceremony both times.
“I didn’t care about getting a statue,” Renner continued. “I didn’t want the statue because you have to go give a speech. The last thing I want to do with my social anxiety is go up and have to give a speech to people.”
The first question the star asks a director is how the filmmaker wants audiences to react at the end of the movie. The reason is that he wants to see whether he will enjoy working with them, meaning a sort of reverse casting process. If they don’t know the answer, he doesn’t take the role, Renner argued.
So, “I haven’t read a script in a decade,” he also quipped, before adding: “I actually read one the other day that I may do.”
What drives his decisions about on-screen roles then? “There are only 12 stories to be told” based on Greek mythology, they are just being told in different ways, he highlighted. That means it is “pretty rare” that a narrative “blows my hair back,” so for him it’s more about the people and the locations, such as the Red Sea. He cited Taylor Sheridan and Kathryn Bigelow as directors who have inspired him. He shared that the latter lets him do his work as there is “a lot of trust.”
Ben Affleck “is very smart, very charming,” and was great to work with on The Town. “We are inspiring each other, challenging” each other, Renner said.
Of course, his work with one of Hollywood’s biggest stars also came up, Tom Cruise. “Working with Tom is so much fun,” he said about working on the Mission: Impossible franchise. “That’s definitely a carnival show.” He joked about yelling at Cruise, who was holding a phone during a stunt at great heights, that he would just grab some body part of his.
The actor also shared that he would not work well with directors asking for more than 10 takes, calling such an approach “masturbatory,” adding he tends to feel that “we got other stuff to do.”
His visit to Saudi Arabia was also a topic of debate. “It’s my first time in Saudi,” Renner also told an excited crowd, later arguing that the country is “on the precipice of a big shift” with many cinemas being built after the opening of the film sector.
Describing filmmaking as “a dance,” Renner said actors, directors, a set, and other things can all trip up the creative process.
How did he get started in acting? “My Dad encouraged me to do the necessary courses and then try stuff and fail,” Renner shared, recalling his father also told him that overcoming obstacles would affect his happiness in life.
“Auditioning is really the worst way to get a job,” Renner suggested, arguing that “you sort of lose that nervousness” of an in-person audition when doing the Zoom auditions that are popular today, quipping about how they sometimes seem to be done by people in their underwear.
The star recalled doing make-up work early on but kept that quiet to be able to be “very driven, very focused” and show that in public. Discussing the difference between stage and film, he mentioned “the power of your vocal” and other things, adding he ended up appreciating “the intricacies” of movies. “I struggled my butt off for the next decade,” he shared.
Loving his job, he recalled not having running water and electricity and a limited food budget for a while, saying “It was worth it” though. And he said about people hating their jobs: “I’d do mine for free if I could. But we live in a capitalist society, so I need a (pay)check.” He concluded: “My job is not a job, it’s just how I live,” comparing it to an artistic carnival.
Renner is among a slew of stars appearing during the fourth edition of RSIFF, including Cynthia Erivo, Michelle Yeoh, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Viola Davis, Olivia Wilde, Emily Blunt, Eva Longoria, Nick Jonas, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and jury president Spike Lee.
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