Jeremy Renner Reveals Moving Message He Told Daughter Ava, 11, After Near-Fatal Snowplow Accident

Jeremy Renner is sharing the touching message he gave to his daughter while reflecting on his near-fatal snowplow accident.

In January 2023, the Avengers star, 53, tried saving his nephew from being run over by a snowplow when the vehicle then slid and crushed the actor. As he tells Kelly Clarkson on the May 30 episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, Renner had 38 broken bones and a crushed skull.

One of the worst parts, as he details, was that “I even forgot about my daughter. That’s how messed up I was in this accident”

The Mission: Impossible actor says, “But once I got off life support and got home after a couple weeks, my sister told me that, you know, Ava was here. That's when it all kicked in for me. 

“My life support really kicked in, because my daughter is my life force,” the actor says of his 11-year-old daughter Ava, whom he shares with ex Sonni Pacheco.

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“How did your little girl deal with that?” Clarkson asks.

“I saw the fear on my daughter's face for the first time,” Renner replies.

“The reality of what transpired really set in. What I had done to my daughter, what I actually did to my nephew, to my whole family, that really set in,” he continues. “So I asked her to wait for me. I said these are just 38 broken bones, darling. And they're all going to heal. And I promise, if you wait for me, I’ll be better, I’ll be faster, I’ll be stronger than you’ve ever seen before. I promise. You have to wait for me.”

The actor took this heart-wrenching conversation and transformed it into a song titled “Wait,” after a friend influenced him to start songwriting. 

Renner then opened up about how making music with his friends and family not only helped them heal, but it turned the incident into something positive.

“We all kind of wanted to heal from the incident. Anybody that cared for me prior to the accident also went through stuff,” he shares. “So doing it musically was very cathartic for us, and even for my daughter because she was very apart of it.” 

“My daughter plays piano, and just to get her involved in the process, it has turned this into something positive. And that's what I've always been trying to do since the accident,” he says, adding, “Music was a great outlet for me… I always love to find something actual that we can all do, and if it became something healing, heck man, even better."