My Next Breath: A Memoir

In the Prologue, Renner presents his core belief that action is the most important thing in life, then shows this philosophy through a dangerous accident that happened on New Year’s Day 2023. Renner believes that while thinking and feeling matter, real change only happens when people take action. He argues that emotions by themselves cannot solve problems or save lives. 

He demonstrates this idea through a life-threatening emergency involving his 27-year-old nephew Alex, with whom he has a close father-son relationship. The crisis began when a huge 14,000-pound snowcat—a large machine Renner uses to clear snow on his mountain property near Lake Tahoe—started sliding out of control across ice toward Alex, who became trapped against a Ford Raptor truck that was pushed against a snowbank with nowhere to run. 

With only seconds to act, Renner needed to prevent his nephew from being crushed to death between the truck and the snowcat’s steel blades. His plan required a very difficult jump: Leaping about three feet up and three feet across to reach the snowcat’s driver compartment, grab the door handle, get inside, and press the emergency stop button. Renner explains that in this moment, he was not the actor famous for doing his own stunts or playing Hawkeye in movies, but simply a family member whose love drove him to protect someone important to him.