Jeremy Renner’s sit-down interview with Diane Sawyer features photos from the blood-filled scene of his snowplow accident.
A lengthy clip released Thursday on “Good Morning America” includes a conversation with two good Samaritans who helped the “Hawkeye” star – and the brutal scene they witnessed upon discovering him after he had been run over.
“It was blood – the amount of blood – and he was just in such pain and the sounds that were coming out of him,” Renner’s Reno, Nevada, neighbor Rich Kovach tells Sawyer.
“There was so much blood in the snow, and then when I looked at his head it appeared to me to be cracked wide open.”
Kovach called for his partner, Barb Fletcher, to assist on the scene. Fletcher says she used a towel to apply “pressure” to Renner’s head because of the amount of blood she saw.
“I could tell he was really struggling to breathe,” Fletcher shares.
Renner, 52, says he remembers clearly all of the pain he endured but couldn’t help but wonder what his “existence” would be like if he hadn’t fully recovered.
“What’s my body look like? Am I just going to be like a spine and a brain like a science experiment? Is that my existence now? What’s my existence going to be like?” he recalls of his mindset.
He credits his mother, Valerie, for giving him the strength to pull through once he was in critical condition following the freak accident, which took place on New Year’s Day.
“As I shift the narrative of being victimized or making a mistake or anything else, I refused to be f–king haunted by that memory that way,” Renner says.
“That’s what I talk to my family about … that I put upon them. We just endured — that’s real love. It’s suffering, but that feeds the seeds of what love is.”
Now that he’s well on his way in his recovery journey – he’s doing upright workouts and walking on treadmills – the “Hurt Locker” actor says he would do it all “again” if it meant saving his grown nephew, who he pushed out of the snowplow’s way, one more time.
Sawyer’s full interview with Renner airs Thursday, April 6.