Why Jeremy Renner Thinks He Briefly Died After Horrific Snowplow Accident

Jeremy Renner, in his new memoir My Next Breath, detailed the moment he felt like he died while waiting for first responders to reach him following his terrifying snowplow accident.

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Watch : Jeremy Renner’s New Project A Year After His Accident

Jeremy Renner is sharing insight into the harrowing moments after his snowplow accident.

Over two years since the Marvel actor’s near-death experience—at which time he suffered over 30 broken bones, amid other life-threatening injuries—Jeremy has detailed the ordeal in his newly released memoir My Next Breath.

Including how, while waiting for the emergency responders to reach him, he believes he briefly died.

“As I lay on the ice, my heart rate slowed, and right there, on that New Year’s Day, unknown to my daughter, my sisters, my friends, my father, my mother, I just got tired,” Jeremy, 54, writes in the memoir. “After about thirty minutes on the ice of breathing manually for so long, an effort akin to doing ten or twenty push-­ups per minute for half an hour . . . that’s when I died.”

He continued, “I died, right there on the driveway to my house.”

The Mayor of Kingstown star, dad to 12-year-old daughter Ava with ex Sonni Pacheco, went on to describe that, despite the broken bones and blood loss, the more serious threat as they waited for the EMTs was hypothermia. 

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According to Jeremy, as his loved ones attempted to administer aid, there was a moment where his coloring changed and he closed his eyes.

“I know I died—in fact, I’m sure of it,” he wrote. “When the EMTs arrived, they noted that my heart rate had bottomed out at 18, and at 18 beats per minute, you’re basically dead.”

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The Hawkeye actor then described what he experienced in those moments.

“When I died, what I felt was energy, a constantly connected, beautiful and fantastic energy,” he wrote. “There was no time, place, or space, and nothing to see, except a kind of electric, two-way vision made from strands of that inconceivable energy.”

As he recalled, “I was in space: no sound, no wind, nothing save this extraordinary electricity by which I am connected to everybody and anything, anyone and everything. I am in every given moment, in one instant, magnified to a number ungovernable by math.”

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Jeremy, who detailed his lengthy recovery on social media in the months after the 2023 accident,   described being able to see his lifetime, and how “everything and everyone” he loved was with him in those moments.

“What came to me on that ice was an exhilarating peace, the most profound adrenaline rush, yet an entirely tranquil one at the same time: electric serenity,” he noted. “I can still feel that space, silent, still, empty, but filled with every instant and all the forevers and, for the first time ever, my existence has nothing to do with time. It was an entirely beautiful place, filled with a knowable magic.”

For more stars who have opened up about their health battles, keep reading.

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Brian Austin Green

The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum revealed in April 2025 that he was recovering from surgery after his appendix nearly burst.

“Last week, I started feeling some pain in my stomach,” Brian said in an Instagram video at the time. “I ended up going to the emergency room, and I had a perforated appendix. Not quite burst, but just before.”

He added, “I'm on the road to recovery. It's not an easy process. This is my first major surgery.”

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Adam Devine 

Adam Devine shared that injuries he sustained after getting hit by a cement truck when he was 11 years old are still affecting him to this day. 

“It’s been a nightmare,” Devine said in a 2025 episode of the In Depth With Graham Bensinger podcast. “I have spasms all over. For a while, [the doctors] told me I was dying—literally, within this last year.”

He noted that pain comes and goes, adding, "My body has all these things that are a little wonky and a little wrong with it."

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Jason Tartick's Back Injury

The Bachelor Nation alum shared that he went to the hospital “crawling on all fours” due to overwhelming back pain that was aggravated during an RV trip with a friend.  

“Right now, knees to my toes, it’s, like, still tingly, which is crazy,” he said on a March 2025 episode of his Trading Secrets podcast. “And to put in perspective, I don’t know, man, like not to sound douchey, but like two, three weeks ago, maybe a month ago, I was squatting probably like 295 pounds. And right now, I can’t do a squat on my foot. I can’t do a one legged squat, I fall. It’s like I had a stroke or something.”

But with the help of a back specialist and some steroids, he added, “We’re on the mend.”

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Casey Fitzgerald's Neck Injury From Hockey Skate Blade

The AHL player was cut by a fellow player's skate during a game in December 2024 and received 25 stitches. His father, New Jersey Devils general manager Tom Fitzgerald later told ESPN after his son was fully recovered, "We're very lucky. I don't wish that on any parent."

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Matt Kirschenheiter's Heart Attack

Real Housewives of Orange County’s Gina Kirschenheiter shared her ex-husband Matt Kirschenheiter suffered a heart attack in March 2025, but thankfully survived the ordeal.

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Tracy Morgan's Medical Emergency

The 30 Rock star suffered a health scare at a New York Knicks basketball game in March 2025, leading to him being wheeled out of Madison Square Garden.

However, the comedian shared an update on social media the following day, noting it was a case of food poisoning and that he was on the mend.

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Christy Carlson Romano's Eye Injury

The Even Stevens alum shared in February 2025 that she was shot in the face while on a trip to shoot clay pigeons to celebrate husband Brendan Rooney's birthday.

"There was another party with us and they unsafely fired in the wrong direction and shot me in the face," she wrote on Instagram. "@thebrendanrooney immediately sprung into action, assessed me, and rushed me to the hospital. I was hit in 5 places, one was less than an inch from hitting me directly in my right eye."

The Kim Possible alum continued, "Unfortunately a fragment got lodged behind my eye and it is too risky to remove surgically at this time. Doctors will continue to monitor me (I can see normally at the moment)."

The actress said she was grateful to be alive. "I love my daughters, husband, family, and friends so much," she said. "I saw my life flash before my eyes and I’m telling you, hug the people around you every chance you can. Life can change in an instant."

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Amy Schumer’s Cushing Syndrome

While the internet isn't always a kind place, Amy Schumer is happy that, in this case, it helped her get answers.

"The internet really came for me after doing a bunch of press, and I was like, 'OK everybody, relax,'" Amy recalled of her "puffier" face on a January 2025 episode of Call Her Daddy. "But then doctors were chiming in in the comments and they were like, 'No no, we think something’s really up. Your face looks so crazy that we think something’s up. And I’m like, ‘Wait, I’m getting trolled by doctors?’"

After these doctors said they thought she had Cushing syndrome and that it may be caused by spiking coritsol levels or steroid injections, the Life & Beth creator thought, "Wait, I have been getting steroid injections in my scars."

"I had a breast reduction, a C-section, whatever, and so I was getting these steroid injections," Amy said. "So it gave me this thing called Cushing syndrome, which I wouldn’t have known if the internet hadn’t come for me so hard."

Toda, Amy is just relieved she's OK. As she shared in a February 2024 News Not Noise newsletter, "Finding out I have the kind of Cushing that will just work itself out and I'm healthy was the greatest news imaginable."

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Hailey Bieber's Blood Clot

Hailey Bieber had the "scariest moment" of her life when she was having breakfast with husband Justin Bieber and started experiencing stroke-like symptoms in March 2022.

"Justin was like, 'Are you OK?'" the Rhode skincare mogul shared a month later on YouTube, "and I just didn't respond because I wasn't sure. And then he asked me again and when I went to respond, I couldn't speak. The right side of my face started drooping. I couldn't get a sentence out."

While Hailey said the facial drooping stopped and her speech came back, she went to the hospital to make sure she was OK.

"They did some scans and they were able to see that I had suffered a small blood clot to my brain," the model added, "which they labeled and categorized as something called a TIA [Transient Ischemic Attack]."

Later, Hailey went to the University of California, Los Angeles, where she found out she had a hole in her heart called a patent foramen ovale (PFO).

She explained the blood clot had traveled into her heart, "escaped" through the hole and went to her brain, leading to the TIA.

Hailey said she had a successful PFO closure procedure and was now feeling great.

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Justin Bieber's Ramsay Hunt Syndrome

The same year Hailey had her health scare, Justin experienced one of his own.

In June 2022, the "Baby" singer shared he was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome, a condition that caused temporary paralysis to parts of his face and forced him to cancel the remainder of his Justice World Tour.

"It is from this virus that attacks the nerve in my ear and my facial nerves and has caused my face to have paralysis," Justin explained in an Instagram video at the time. "As you can see, this eye is not blinking. I can't smile on this side of my face. This nostril will not move. So, there's full paralysis on this side of my face."

In fact, he told his followers it had gotten "progressively harder to eat." But after a while, the paralysis went away.

"He's doing really well," Hailey said on a June 2022 episode of Good Morning America, later adding, "He's feeling a lot better. Obviously, it was just a very scary and random situation to happen, but he's going to be totally OK and I'm just grateful that he's fine." 

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Jamie Foxx's Brain Bleed & Stroke

While Jamie Foxx initially kept details of his April 2023 hospitalization private, he later opened up about what he went through.

One day in Atlanta, "I was having such a bad headache, so I asked my boy, I said, ‘Listen, I need an aspirin,’” the Oscar winner said in his 2024 Netflix special What Had Happened Was... “Before I could get the Aspirin, I went out. I don’t remember 20 days.”

Jamie said he was initially taken to a doctor who gave him a cortisone shot and then sent him home. However, his concerned sister Deidra Dixon then drove him to a hospital, where they got an answer: He had a brain bleed that led to a stroke.

Twenty days after undergoing an operation, the Django Unchained woke up May 4 in a wheelchair and couldn’t walk. He then went to Chicago for rehabilitation and therapy.

"All I can tell you is that I appreciate every prayer,” he said, “because I needed every prayer.”

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Emilia Clarke's Brain Aneurysm

Emilia Clarke filmed battle scenes for Game of Thrones, but in 2019, she published an essay in The New Yorker titled "A Battle for My Life."

Having a bad headache at the gym, "I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill," the actress wrote. "Meanwhile, the pain—shooting, stabbing, constricting pain—was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged."

She was taken to the hospital for a brain scan.

"The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain," the Emmy nominee added. "I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture."

Emilia had immediate surgery to seal the aneurysm, calling the pain "unbearable." While she was recovering, she continued, she experienced aphasia and was "muttering nonsense."

A week later, "the aphasia passed," Emilia added, and she left the hospital a month after being admitted.

At a 2013 brain scan, she learned a growth "doubled in size" and that she needed surgery again.

"When they woke me, I was screaming in pain," she wrote. "The procedure had failed. I had a massive bleed and the doctors made it plain that my chances of surviving were precarious if they didn’t operate again. This time they needed to access my brain in the old-fashioned way—through my skull."

Thankfully, Emilia shared, she's now "at a hundred per cent."

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Cori Broadus's Stroke

Snoop Dogg's daughter Cori Broadus is grateful for her family.

Because after she suffered a "severe stroke" in January 2024, her loved ones rushed to be by her side.

"I texted them that I just had a stroke and sent them a picture," she told E! News correspondent Will Marfuggi in December 2024. "Everybody just came to my rescue."

Because of other medical concerns, Cori ended up staying in the hospital longer than she initially expected.

"I could have went home after my stroke, but my lupus wasn't doing so well," the Snoop's Fatherhood: Cori and Wayne's Story star continued. "My kidneys were failing. It was a lot going on."

Today, Cori is on the mend.

"I'm doing great," she added. "I just had a little bit of motor skills that I had to work back on. But other than that, I was fine."

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Shailene Woodley's Health Battle

Shailene Woodley’s early 20s were not an easy time health-wise.

“It got to the point where I was losing my hearing. I couldn’t walk for longer than five minutes at a time without having to lay down for hours, and hours and sleep. Everything I ate hurt my stomach,” the actress said on a September 2024 episode of the SHE MD Podcast. “It was this conflation of issues and diagnoses and different doctors telling me different things.”

So Shailene—who chose to keep the exact condition private—set out to find answers.

“I come from a very holistic background and study herbalism,” she added. “So I was very keen on, ‘I’m going to work with real MDs, [and] I’m also going to work with independent kind of healers.’ Just trying to search for some sense of comfort in my own skin.”

It was a long journey—one that lasted for 10 years.

“Throughout that decade, a lot of other things came from feeling so much discomfort physically,” the Big Little Lies star noted, “which was, ‘My gosh, if everything I eat hurts my stomach, I’m now suddenly afraid of food.’ And then going into the kind of mental f--ckery that can happen with that of body dysmorphia and confusion about identity and feeling safe in my own capsule, in my own skin, what that meant, and what that should be.”

After tending to both her physical and mental health, Shailene is feeling much better.

“It was a journey that ultimately physically resolved itself, and I am very healthy,” she shared. “I’m so happy to be able to say that."

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