Moviegoers tend to like Jeremy Renner best when he plays two-fisted, daring, close-to-the-vest tough guys. He was, after all, so convincing as The Hurt Locker’s Army maverick defusing bombs in Iraq that he snagged a 2010 best actor Oscar nomination. Playing a hot-wired, nothing-to-lose Boston bank robber in The Town the next year, Renner clinched a best supporting actor Oscar nomination. He’s no less watchable when he dials down the macho, as he’s shown as American Hustle’s shady New Jersey mayor and as Kill the Messenger’s persecuted whistle-blower. But he’s completely in the zone drawing a crossbow as Hawkeye in the Avengers superhero flicks, busting out Muay Thai moves as a member of the Mission: Impossible spy team and running up the side of a three-story building as a genetically enhanced black-ops agent in The Bourne Legacy. That’s why this is the summer of Renner. He’s in two epics: Avengers: Age of Ultron, which topped the box office, and Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation, coming in July.
Offscreen Renner is equally colorful. He caused talk for commenting on the bodacious breasts of Jennifer Lopez, his co-presenter, at this year’s Golden Globe Awards. He and his Avengers co-star Chris Evans stoked the internet outrage machine when they jokingly referred to their fellow superhero Black Widow as a sl*t. Evans apologized, while Renner pointed out the obvious: He was talking about fictional behavior of a fictional character. He has also flipped the bird at those who speculate about his sexual orientation. On one subject, though, he has been tight-lipped: the gnarly ongoing divorce from his wife of 10 months, 24-year-old actress-model Sonni Pacheco, with whom he recently came to a joint-custody agreement concerning their two-year-old daughter, Ava.
Jeremy Lee Renner (nickname Renni) was born in working-class Modesto, California on January 7, 1971 to a mother who ruled a roost of four kids and a father who managed a bowling center and later became a college administrator. (They divorced when Renner, the oldest, was eight.) After graduating from Beyer High School, where sports and playing in a rock band helped him overcome shyness, he attended Modesto Junior College, gravitating toward computer science until he discovered the school’s theater department.
In 1992, after studying at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, he moved to Los Angeles and landed the lead role in 1995’s National Lampoon’s Senior Trip, starred in a series of beer commercials and did TV movies and series guest spots including a role as a vampire on Angel. His 2002 Independent Spirit Award–nominated performance as the people-eating serial killer in Dahmer helped pave the way to his big-budget breakthrough role as a dirty cop in S.W.A.T., followed by 28 Weeks Later, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and a stint on the short-lived 2009 NYPD cop series The Unusuals. But once Renner collected multiple award nominations for The Hurt Locker and The Town, he moved up to legitimate stardom.
Playboy sent Contributing Editor Stephen Rebello, who last interviewed Joaquin Phoenix, to catch up with Renner. Reports Rebello: “Jeremy Renner’s experience augmenting his acting by dabbling in real estate has paid off. We met at his sprawling, sleek home, sitting on a terrace that rings the Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired house. The view was spectacular. Renner has a watchful gaze that many people mistake for a suspicious nature. But during our long conversations I found him to be unexpectedly bighearted, philosophical and thoughtful. It’s astonishing to watch Hawkeye turn into Mr. Rogers when he’s playing at home with his two-year-old.”
You’ve grabbed attention and critical acclaim for roles in indie-minded movies as different as The Hurt Locker and Kill the Messenger, but audiences know you best as an action hero in The Avengers, Mission: Impossible and The Bourne Legacy. Are you anywhere near as fearless as those characters?
Fear is a huge part of most people’s lives. It’s a very oppressive human emotion, the most powerful human emotion. Every day from when I was 22 to 32, I deliberately and consciously did things to fight fear. Things I was afraid of, like guns, sharks, heights, success, intimacy? I’ve checked those off the list. Even in the beginning of my career, my confidence always came from being fearless. I always went in to auditions with the attitude “I dare you not to cast me.” I went in and did what I thought was honest, truthful and just different. Maybe it was wrong. I didn’t care. Maybe they thought it was the worst. I didn’t care. I just went in, and still go in, with absolute fearlessness. It’s my strength as an actor.
You mentioned guns. Many of your characters use them. Are you still afraid?
A gun is a really easy and terrifying thing to be afraid of. I like guns now, but I have only a couple—a couple at this structure and one at another. I got good at them, and then I found a love for them.
Do you carry a gun?
No. For me it’s for home protection or sport shooting or target practice. I’m not a hunter. I spent a lot of time training for movies, shooting and getting comfortable with weapons. There’s no fear for me ever in a weapon now. I also have a few swords, but that’s because of what they mean to me; there’s a lot of history behind them. They’re all tucked away and hidden now that I have a baby.
What risks won’t you take?
None. I’ve been riding a motorcycle for a long time. I used to be kind of daring on it. Now I ride because I enjoy the experience. I’m not a daredevil doing wheelies, and I don’t ride fast. That’s not because of my daughter; it’s because that’s where I’m at in my life. I’m not jumping out of planes. But would I, if I had the opportunity? I’ve wanted to do that for a good 30 years, so I would consider it. I want to learn to fly a helicopter. Is that dangerous? Sure, I guess it’s just as dangerous as anything else in life. Has having my daughter, Ava, stopped me from doing that? We can croak at any moment doing the stupidest things. It would be a great disservice to her if, when she was older, she thought, Dad stopped riding motorcycles or started getting soft and protective of his own life because he wanted to be around for me. What message does that send? That living life with fear is a good thing? I’d rather that she knows I’d go out with a smile on my face living accountably, consciously and responsibly in my actions.
When was the last time you had to defend yourself?
I’ve never been in a real physical fight. There’s no reason to fight—unless I have to protect my life or the life of someone I care about. I’ve been in altercations, and there have been a few moments when I had to put someone down.
Who?
A drunk guy in a bar—it’s always that scenario. A guy got really drunk and pushed Julia Stiles, my co-star [in the 2005 movie A Little Trip to Heaven]. I kindly choked him out and remedied the situation. I’ve also had to choke people out because they pushed my mom or knocked my sister down, but I’ve never felt like a badass.
Those sound like physical fights to us. Let’s talk about the incident involving your sister that you mentioned in a 2012 interview about a Christmas Eve bar fight. You said, “This guy choked me with the scarf I was wearing. He called me a *** because I was wearing a scarf! Then he shoved my sister and I got behind him and I choked him out—put him to sleep.” That same interview was one of the few in which you’ve addressed rumors about your sexual preference.
I was mad at the interviewer and was kind of hammering him, saying, “I thought we were doing the cover of Hollywood Reporter, not OK! magazine.” And while I was hammering him, I figured, Okay, I’ll speak to this. But as a general rule I don’t respond to questions about my personal life. I’m not going to try to prove what I am or am not. It’s silly, right? When you google yourself and the first thing that comes up is “Jeremy Renner gay,” it’s like, “Oh, now you’ve arrived. You’re now a giant movie star.” So I just had a big laugh about it. I don’t care, ultimately, if that’s what people want to think, read and care about. ****ing say whatever the hell you want about me. Look at where we’re at socially—leaps and bounds ahead of where we started. That’s an amazing thing. To suggest that it’s negative, that being gay is a terrible thing, a perversion or whatever—I just don’t get it. Don’t you wish we were in a world where we’re not shaming, judging and boxing people in?
Unlike many actors, you’ve managed to maintain a profitable side career for years, flipping houses with your longtime friend and business partner Kristoffer Winters.
In 2003 I had no money, but I had a contract to do S.W.A.T. My brother Kristoffer—he’s a family friend forever, but I call him my brother—came into a little bit of money, 10 grand or something. We’d lived together prior to S.W.A.T. and kept talking about how paying rent was such a dumb thing because you can’t write it off on your taxes. It’s like throwing away money. We always wanted to invest in property. It became a situation where I could get a condo in the Valley and he could do the same, or since we already lived together, we could buy a house together. That’s what we did, and we fixed it up the way we wanted for 30 grand.
You flipped that house, right?
We had a little wine shindig at the house. Our real estate agent was there, and someone who was at the party offered twice what we paid for it. We turned that money into a bigger house and kept rolling from there. Being actors, we thought if it all went to hell, at least we’d have a roof over our heads. We didn’t want to do the stock market or anything else, so we kept acquiring bigger structures, and now it’s 20-some houses later between the two of us. Some we did on our own, but mostly we did them together.
And your MO is to live in the houses before selling?
Each house has always been our primary residence. We never considered ourselves flippers. We were just investing in the next home we were going to live in. We live in the houses while the work’s being done. Most people couldn’t do that, and we’ve done it umpteen times. It’s like going back to camping and caveman days—no electricity, no running water. [Director-writer] Preston Sturges was the first owner of the last house we were in, and Charlie Chaplin was married there. We wanted to preserve some sort of Hollywood history in a very transient town.
You guys made headlines in 2013 for selling for $24 million a redone art deco–style mansion that you bought for $7 million. By now someone must have pitched you two on doing a reality-TV series on celebrity house renovation.
I haven’t done a house with Kristoffer in a while. I don’t have a lot of time for that stuff anymore. He went off and did that big house on his own, then started a design firm. My mother and sister work there too. A lot of TV offers have come in. Ellen DeGeneres talked about me coming on as a judge on one of her shows. Kristoffer and I considered putting together our own TV show that I was just going to produce but not appear in.
What about the house we’re in right now?
The builder-owner of this house really had it pimped out for 1960, when it was built. It was like a Star Trek home with panels and buttons. It just needed to be brought up to today’s standards, and I wanted to keep the integrity of the home of this amazing couple who raised their two girls here. I have another home in Tahoe where I spend half my time, but this is my home now, and I’m pretty sure this is my last structure. It’s something I built, and it’s a representation of every house I built and pretty much every movie I’ve done. This house represents a lot of who I am spiritually. This will be my daughter’s place in the future. I own it now, but Ava owns me. When she drew her first breath and with that palmar reflex grabbed my finger, the thought came to me, If all goes well, this same scenario will happen when I take my last breath.
After you appeared as a presenter at the Golden Globe Awards in January, some criticized you for making a quip about your co-presenter Jennifer Lopez’s cleavage in her low-cut gown. When it came time to give out the award, she asked, “You want me to open the envelope? I’ve got the nails,” and you said, “You’ve got the globes too.”
I’d just watched the show’s opening monologue, thinking, Those girls, co-hosts Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, are so funny, awesome and pretty racy. So I went out, and then that happened. It’s my sense of humor. I don’t take things too seriously. I didn’t watch any of the Globes. I went to have a drink at the bar, and I kept hearing people all night saying, “Dude, that was the funniest thing,” “Bro, that was the best part of the show.” I was like, What are you talking about? I was clueless.
It blew up on social media.
Actually, Jennifer thought it was ****ing funny and got a little sweaty and maybe even turned on by the whole experience. We partied at a couple of events afterward and had a good time. Other people started running their mouths about it. Everybody’s entitled to an opinion, but I can’t be bothered. We gave zero ****s. I would have made a public apology if it really hurt her feelings. It was the complete opposite, and she’s gone on record as saying she thinks Renner’s hysterical.
You’ve been going through a highly publicized divorce from Sonni Pacheco, your wife of 10 months. You’ve settled the custody issues regarding your daughter, but some of the accusations that were made public from the court documents must be especially uncomfortable for someone as private as you are.
I haven’t slept more than four hours a night in the past week. My skin’s breaking out. I’ve got dark circles under my eyes. I’m dehydrated. I look like ****. I felt pretty insecure walking into a photo shoot this morning, and I was running late because I had just gotten out of my fourth deposition for the divorce. I see anything that takes me away from my daughter, whether it’s something good like making Mission: Impossible 5 or something bad like my divorce, as a distraction and an obstacle. Now, if anything takes me away and I don’t get to see her, I just won’t do it. I don’t care what you pay me. All my energy goes toward her and her well-being. We split the time with Ava equally now. When it’s Daddy and Ava time, that’s all I do.
