Back from the brink | Review of My Next Breath by Jeremy Renner

Jeremy Renner shares his harrowing yet ultimately healing journey after a near-death experience in his memoir, My Next Breath.

Two days after being crushed by a 14,000-pound snowplough on New Year’s Day of 2023, actor Jeremy Renner, now 54, posted a selfie from his hospital bed. “Well, I was high on all sorts of painkillers and morphine,” Jeremy laughs, speaking over a video call from London. The famous selfie is part of Jeremy’s harrowing yet ultimately healing memoir about the accident, My Next Breath.

“I didn’t realise I was in a coma,” the two-time Academy Award nominee confesses. “When I woke up, my sister handed me my phone, saying people were worried. I’m like, ‘Okay, well, let people know that I’m not gone.’ I’m going to get out of here this afternoon. I literally thought I was leaving that day,” he laughs. “Little did I know how messed up I was.”

The good thing about social media, Jeremy says, is you can squelch rumours. “You can directly say, ‘I didn’t lose a leg. I’m alive. Everything’s fine.’ I actually looked pretty good in the selfie I took!”

Though Jeremy has written songs for his three albums, this is Jeremy’s first book. “Starting was the most difficult. I knew, lived and was still living the story. I had to have a solid reason for writing the book. I still am baffled that people are interested. That’s why in the prologue I wrote of not wanting to write it.”

Jeremy is glad he ignored his initial hesitation and committed to writing. “It was cathartic and healing and was for others as well.” The Hurt Locker actor worked with a writer for the structure of the memoir. “This is an emotional and taxing narrative, so I had to be in a vulnerable and open place. We did a lot of interviews, and created an outline that allows for movement, growth and strength.”

Talking as he would to a friend, Jeremy says he wrote and dictated from 11 to two every day. “It was great but exhausting. It’s like daily therapy,” he laughs.

Though called a memoir, Jeremy insists that My Next Breath is not one in the traditional sense. “It’s not about my life or reflection on my career. This is about living and dying in this incident and then recovering from it and the things learned in that. There is some reflection on some of my life prior (including learning the value of doing his own stunts from Tom Cruise, his co-star in two Mission: Impossible films), and the bread crumbs that led me to recovery.”