- I don't know if I would say I'm a thrill seeker.
I'm always down to do some thrills.
I don't think I'm seeking it. [laughs]
I'm not actively getting up in the morning, cup of coffee,
"Let's go find some [beep] to jump off of."
[crew laughing]
That make sense?
I like challenges, that's for sure.
I'd definitely be more of a challenge seeker.
I love problems to overcome.
[cheerful music]
Hi, I'm Jeremy Renner and this is the timeline of my career.
For me, it's sort of dumb luck.
It was in college and took an acting class as an elective,
and that's when everything kind of shifted for me.
But once I started acting in L.A., I was like 23 or 24,
on the side was as a makeup artist.
I was a makeup artist while I was in L.A.
for a good eight years, and that was my job on the weekends
to kind of keep me afloat so I can go audition.
[cheerful music]
- Lisa.
Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa.
- What?
- Wanna cut and go to a party?
Come on. I know you like me.
- Would you leave me alone?
- Actually booking was like, you know,
winning the lottery type of feeling.
I remember jumping up and down and I called my mom
and I said, "I'm going to Toronto. I got this movie."
And I didn't know where the hell fucken Toronto was.
But I'm like, I was so excited.
I remember kissing the dirty old carpet
at the crappy apartment I was living in.
It was a big, big milestone for me to know that like, hey,
I can actually work in this city.
[cheerful music]
- I buy you these shoes,
you just gotta take a couple of pictures.
- Well, what kind of pictures?
- Just a couple of pictures of you, you know,
making a muscle, sitting in a chair,
you know, looking tough.
- That movie has a lot of value to me in my life.
This is probably around 2000.
So some good seven years have been gone by
since "Senior Trip."
I think there was like an actors strike
I believe around that time,
so I remember, you know, a lot of struggles
'cause I was doing a lot of commercials at the time
to help keep working as an actor and help pay the bills.
But I remember being very, very poor
in the sense of that I had no electricity, no running water,
and that kind of stuff happening.
My manager at the time said,
"Hey, there's this thing with Dahmer."
I'm like, "That sounds interesting."
So then I went and read this monologue for the director,
got cast that day,
and then three days later we started shooting,
and then 14 days after that moment we were done shooting.
So it happened very, very, very quickly.
It was a whirlwind of an experience
and the movie did well for me in the sense
of a lot of people within the industry
saw it and noticed it,
and how people perceived me shifted in a positive way,
as far as like creative opportunities for me in the future.
Kathryn Bigelow saw "Dahmer"
and this is the guy to play Will James
for "The Hurt Locker."
- That wasn't so bad our first time working together.
What do you think?
- Huh.
I think us working together means I talk to you
and you talk to me.
- We going on a date, Sanborn?
- No. We're going on a mission.
- Kathryn was in L.A.,
so I flew from London for a dinner to meet her in person
and she shows me a lookbook, which is just images,
and talk more about the character.
I was more just sort of like agreeing like,
"Yeah, we're gonna go do this."
After getting the role it was probably a good year,
year and a half before we started actually filming,
so I'd read other actors.
I would go to Fort Irwin and train with EOD,
which is part of just understanding the role.
And then we started our production
and went to Middle East and started filming.
As like a kid from Modesto, California,
it's strange going over to the Middle East, you know.
Everything was just different.
It's 130 degrees.
You got a 100-pound bomb suit on,
but, like, heat, it doesn't become heat anymore.
Like, pain is more of a spiritual pain
than it is like a physical sort of pain.
The location was a huge character in that film in particular
where it only informs you of truths.
You know, if we were supposed to be freezing,
it would have been awful, you know, 'cause it's 130 degrees.
But everything that we were doing,
everywhere we were, made it easier, realistic to us.
The shooting experience is one thing,
but then as it all came together,
it took about two years before it to actually be released.
So we were going around to every military base
and showing the film and talking about it,
and that's not even something on my filmography.
This is more of a life experience
that I was blessed to be a part of.
You know, it became a wonderful tool to communicate
between civilian life and soldier life.
And then the kind of the payoff with Kathryn
becoming the first woman director to win an Oscar.
I survived all the way through until,
until, yeah, one day.
We wrapped and then the boys,
we all went over to Beirut and had fun,
and then my buddy got drunk and he ordered a sandwich
to the room and I ate a sandwich for him
'cause he passed out and it had lettuce on it,
and I was done.
I lost 30 pounds in four days.
Got heli lifted back to Jordan.
I'm like, "I'm wrapped.
"I'm on my own free time,
"and I'm sicker than I've ever been sick in my life."
[laughs] Yeah, those memories.
- There's too many locks.
There's too many. I can't do it.
- Undo. - I can't get it off.
I'm sorry, okay?
You understand? I'm sorry.
- Help me.
- You hear me? I'm sorry.
I'm sorry!
- [Sanborn] Get down now!
[soldiers yelling]
[car horns honking]
- Did you say your name was Jim or Jem?
- Ah, it's J-Jem. Well, it's both, actually.
Um, teachers when we were growing up, you know,
used to always say, "Hey, you can have this one.
"He's a real gem."
So I guess it kinda stuck.
- Yeah, that was just as foreign to me
as being in the Middle East.
You know, I didn't know really much about Boston.
Ben's said like, "We're not gonna do any dialect coaches."
So he just put me with a bunch of people in a bar,
ex-cons just got out of a 20-year bit.
These are all dudes that were in prison,
all guys that did bank robberies and armored car heists
and that kind of stuff.
It couldn't be funnier and cooler and the whole thing,
but I just hung out with them for, like, two weeks.
Ben is a wonderful, super, super smart guy.
It was a great journey to work with him,
and Boston has a really, really cool, beautiful community.
I really enjoyed shooting there.
- About six foot, 180 pounds, blue eyes. Who is he?
- Crude drawing, but by your description,
that could be Kurt Hendricks.
190 IQ, served in Swedish special forces,
professor of physics.
- I was meeting with J.J. Abrams
about the movie "Super 8," I believe.
I think I was sitting in this room and he says,
"Hey, I wanna hear all your thoughts,
"but what do you think about 'Mission Impossible'?"
I'm like, "Yeah, they're great movies. I love them.
"So anyway, 'Super 8'--"
"No, hold on.
"Would you like to go meet Tom?
"'Cause they're having a whole kind of show-and-tell
"right now over at Paramount."
I'm like, "Uh, okay. Like, right now?"
He's like, "Yeah, yeah, let me call him."
So I'm driving across from Santa Monica now
all the way back into Hollywood
and I go sit in his room and talking to Tom Cruise
and all the people kind of involved in that and the director
and we start talking and they say,
"Hey, we really want you in this movie."
I'm like, "Okay, that's great."
They're saying this and talking about this,
and I'm like, "Well, all this sounds really amazing,
"you guys, but like, why me?"
And they're like, "Well, because we look at you
"and you can be a good guy or a bad guy.
"People might be on the fence.
"You're like a coiled spring."
I'm like, "Great, I understand that.
"I get why you say that."
I didn't say yes or no.
I just gave them all a hug and I went home.
And I got a phone call from Tom.
First of all, how does Tom Cruise have my home line?
[laughs] I'm like, "Hello." "Hey, it's Tom."
"Hey, what's up, man?"
And he said, "Do you wanna do it or not?"
I'm like, "Yeah, of course I'll do it.
"I'll do it. Yeah, sure." And I hung up.
So that's how I got the role.
And still, I didn't know what the script was
or the character was, and I mean how could I say no.
It was just a strange, odd thing.
I went in for one movie with J.J.
and then come home for now ultimately a trilogy
with "Mission Impossibles."
Tom taught me a lot about an actor in the stunt world
and treating it like that's a big part of the job
and how to prepare your body enough
to go through the punishment,
which got my brain thinking about stunts in a different way,
which really started a trajectory for me in the stunt world.
And I loved it 'cause I've always been athletic,
always been an athlete,
and now I got to sort of use those skills
in the acting world.
That's why the action movies are just as fun to me
as like some character-driven movie,
'cause there's lots of challenges and things to overcome
in those types of films.
In the stunts, you know, jeez,
Tom is just an absolute genius maniac.
This guy's insane.
But it inspired me to be the best I could be.
[dramatic music]
[Ethan yelling]
[dramatic music]
- Stark, got a lot of strays sniffing your tail.
[dramatic music]
- Just trying to keep them off the streets.
- Well, they can't bank worth a damn.
[dramatic music]
Find a tight corner.
- I remember going in to talk with Kevin Feige
and Lou D'Esposito
and they'd show me like the Ultimates version of Hawkeye.
"Iron Man" had come out,
and I said, "Look, man, I'm in to what you guys are doing."
'Cause I loved "Iron Man."
"I like how you made, you know, 'Iron man' plausible.
"It was so like, ah, I love that."
So that's where they wanted to go with it.
I'm like, "Great."
You gotta kind of sign on for like, you know,
a bunch of Avenger films and potential Hawkeye films.
They kind of sign your life away.
I'm like, "Wait, man, I might be 50 in tights."
That was like my main concern.
I'm like, I don't know if I wanna do this.
I don't think anybody wants to see me
in tights at 50. [laughs]
I mean, you know, the greatest thing
from all that experience over a decade
with Marvel and the MCU is lifelong friendships
and bonds I have with the original six.
You know, we all got tattoos.
It's A6 sign, but it has all the original symbols
for the original six Avengers in it.
The greatest thing about it is that we all shared
that Willy Wonka experience, right?
This close to sort of feeling, oh, you're a kid
and you got the ticket and you go to this candyland world,
like, oh my goodness.
And then the personal side of that,
that's just the work side.
There's marriages and divorce and kids,
all that happened during that decade.
It was really, really interesting to be able to share that.
- How many arrows did you bring?
- All of them, like 11.
- 11? [audience laughing]
- 11. There are a hundred thousand aliens out there.
- And I killed 11 of them. You're welcome.
[audience laughing]
[Jeremy laughing]
I'm out, bitches!
Anybody want something at Taco Bell?
[crew chuckling]
No, he's got hundreds and hundreds of arrows.
Like, let's not take ourselves that fucken serious.
Thor, you have a cappuccino in your hand, dude.
Right? There's a hammer and a cappuccino.
We're all dressed in, like, Halloween costumes,
for God's sakes.
You know, we'd make fun of the thing.
And Marvel also has that idea, right, when it's appropriate,
and I think that's why it works, you know?
To me, it's all the same.
My job is to your output truth and behavior
and understand the scope of where that behavior lies
in the story.
But it's all the same,
whether you're talking to a tennis ball, right.
Food might be a little bit better.
The craft services probably a little bit better
on a Marvel movie. [laughs]
That's the only difference, though.
That's the only difference.
- If it's all the same to you,
[heroic music]
I'll have that drink now.
[Hulk grunting] [heroic music]
- [Kate] Hey, look, that one's you.
- No, it's Katniss Everdeen. Let's go.
[people chattering]
- Your problem is branding.
- No, my problem is you in this ninja suit
and then people are trying to kill you
because of this ninja suit.
The whole thing's a problem that I'm going to solve today.
- I was really excited about the idea of, on Disney Plus,
doing like a long-form storytelling version of it.
I think it's a more accessible way
to learn about a character, even for myself,
'cause, you know, he was part of a giant sort of universe.
How do you get into the real backstory
and the understanding the character a bit more?
Long-form of storytelling, you know, in a series
is a better accessible way, I think.
It's great so we could do a six-hour movie
instead of like a two-hour movie.
Partnering up with a female Hawkeye
and there's a lot of opportunities
to expand the storytelling.
- [Interviewer] Is "Hawkeye" a Christmas series?
- It's definitely like a holiday event series, for sure.
For sure.
There's a reason why it's being released on November 24th
and it'll end on Christmas.
I mean, it plays holiday music on the teaser
and the trailer, right?
I think you answered your own question.
I don't have to be here. [crew laughing]
I don't have to be here.
You can answer your own questions.
[cheerful music]
- Can you get it?
- Nope.
- That's going to be a problem for you.
[glass shattering] - Ah!
- Son of a bitch, fuck.
- So it's shot like a 10-hour film
and it's based in a small town that's prisons.
People are either in the prison
or waiting for the people to come out of the prison
or work for the prison.
The character I play is the lead title character,
and he's a good guy.
He is the oil or the fluid or the grease
of this entire engine of the business of incarceration.
He can just keep it running smooth to try
or at least attempt to keep peace
between the prisoners and the guards,
just everyone in and out of the prison.
There's a lot of moments I think back on,
like all these pinch-me moments,
like I can't believe this is happening.
What, am I driving a Ferrari to an F1 race?
And then I see Prince in concert with like 400 people.
Hanging off the Burj Khalifa with Tom Cruise,
holding his foot.
I mean all these weird things, like what?
It's strange.
You know, you can't predict those types of things in life.
You sort of just roll with it and be like,
"That was a day."
Ever since I've gotten my best role to date
which is being a father, that's my best role,
so everything is sort of like second banana at that point.
There's a lot of things that'd be interesting to do
that I'd love to go explore,
but always my primary focus is my best role to date
is being a dad, and that's what it'll always be.
[wistful music]