Hollywood star Jeremy Renner has hauntingly detailed exactly what he experienced in the moment he momentarily ‘died’ in 2023.
The two-time Oscar nominee was crushed by a 14,300-lb snowcat outside his Lake Tahoe home on New Year’s Day, leaving him with 38 broken bones as well as a collapsed lung and pierced liver.
He was put on life support for three days following the accident, with his family left on tenterhooks over whether he would pull through.
Now, the star of Hurt Locker and The Bourne Legacy has claimed he felt ‘electric peace’ in the moment and witnessed his ‘life review’.
Recalling his near-death experience—labelling it ‘the most pure, beautiful existence’—the 54-year-old also said he felt he was surrounded by ‘everyone’ he has ever loved.
These phenomena, which have been a source of fascination for medics and the public alike for decades, are believed to occur when people are clinically ‘dead’, and extremely unlikely to survive.
Many of those who’ve had such an experience claim to have seen the afterlife.
Speaking on the High Performance podcast, he told host Jake Humphrey: ‘It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Speaking on the High Performance podcast, the star of Hurt Locker and The Bourne Legacy has claimed he felt ‘electric peace’ in the moment and witnessed his ‘life review’
The two-time Oscar nominee was crushed by a 14,300-lb snowcat outside his Lake Tahoe home on New Year’s Day 2023, leaving him with 38 broken bones as well as a collapsed lung and pierced liver
‘You get to see behind the curtain and there’s some sort of solace that comes—look I didn’t want to come back, let me put it that way.’
Questioned why he didn’t want to come back, he added: ‘It’s the most pure, beautiful existence for us to be.
‘There’s not much to see, that’s a human experience. In your mind’s eye, in your imagination what you witness when you die, you don’t see, you don’t have vision, you don’t breathe.
‘There’s no time, place or space. Love is the only thing that exists. That is what you feel, that is what you experience.
‘You experience your life review. You have anyone you ever loved, anything that is attached to love, there with you at all time, space and place.
‘I mean everything and everyone is there, everyone. Magic. It is the most electric peace.’
Experiences of seeing and hearing things while clinically dead do have some scientific basis.
For years studies have shown the human brain still functions normally for a very brief time after the heart stops, although it appears to have ceased activity on regular scans.
Recalling his near-death experience—labelling it ‘the most pure, beautiful existence’—the 54-year-old also said he felt he was surrounded by ‘everyone’ he has ever loved. Pictured, Renner in December 2024
The Hollywood actor also suffered a collapsed lung, pierced liver and major laceration in his head
Research has also revealed that the brain can still experience sporadic bursts of activity even after an hour without oxygen, during resuscitation.
Such discoveries have led to some medics calling for an overhaul of the standard practice that rules people should be declared dead after three-to-five minutes of oxygen deprivation to the brain, as these patients could still in theory be resuscitated.
Renner’s horrifying snowplow accident occurred after he forgot to engage the emergency brake on the monster vehicle after plowing his property.
To his horror, it began careening towards his nephew, Alexander Fries, who was out helping him that day.
Acting purely on instinct he said he attempted to jump back into the driver’s seat and get the snowcat under control.
But instead, he was pulled under its tank-like tracks, leaving him with life-threatening injuries including 38 broken bones in his ribs, knee, ankles, pelvis, face and hands.
He also suffered a collapsed lung, pierced liver and major laceration in his head.
In his 224-page memoir released last month and titled My Next Breath—all about his near-fatal accident—he also revealed that he laid on the ice for 45 minutes waiting for emergency vehicles to reach him.
Renner’s nephew, Alexander Fries (right), was in the snowplow’s path when it began hurtling towards him. Renner tried to jump back into the driver’s seat to stop it, but was dragged under
During this time his pulse bottomed out at 18 beats per minute, by which stage, ‘you’re basically dead’, he wrote.
‘I know I died—in fact, I’m sure of it,’ he added.
While he has undergone a remarkable recovery in just over two years, the actor still suffers one agonising injury in his mouth.
‘Every time I’m talking, or eating, or sleeping, I want to scream inside because of the chaos in my mouth,’ he wrote.
‘My teeth will never line up properly again. One side got pushed so far offline by the Snowcat and it’s unfixable.’
Despite this, he added, he said he was grateful to be alive.
‘I knew then, as I know now to this day and will always know: Death is not something to be afraid of. Death is something to look forward to, a return to that electric serenity outside of time.’
‘Dying, you become connected to the collective energy everywhere all at once, which is itself a kind of divinity.’
In his 224-page memoir released last month and titled My Next Breath—all about his near-fatal accident—he revealed that he laid on the ice for 45 minutes waiting for emergency vehicles to reach him
On January 1 2025, Jeremy celebrated his second ‘ReBirthday’ and thanked the ‘army of people that it took to put me back together’ after he suffered blunt chest trauma and 38 broken bones
People have previously told MailOnline of their near death and out of body experiences such as seeing bright lights at the end of a tunnel or meeting deceased relatives.
Others, meanwhile, have also recalled seeing a heavenly afterlife.
While evidence on something happening in brains after clinical death is still being explored, exactly why so many people have similar experiences remains an issue of contention among experts.
Some theorise that as the brain is undergoing these changes essentially the ‘brakes’ come off the system and this opens our perception to incredibly lucid and vivid experiences of stored memories from our lives.
However, this is only a theory and other experts dispute this.
Clinical death also differs from brain death.
Brain death is when a person on an artificial life support machine no longer has any brain function, which means they will not regain consciousness.
Such patients have no chance of recovery because their body is unable to survive without artificial life support.
In the UK this means a person who has suffered brain death is legally dead.
This can be difficult to comprehend for families of the deceased as they can see their loved one’s chest rise and fall with every breath from the ventilator as well as their heart continuing to beat.
Brain death can be caused by both illness and injury when blood and/or oxygen supplies are cut off to the vital organ.
The condition is different from a vegetative state where a patient’s brain function remains.
