With a cane in hand, Jeremy Renner danced his way onto the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” stage on Monday.
The Marvel actor appeared on the late-night ABC talk show just four months after a near-fatal snowplow accident around his Lake Tahoe-area home on New Year’s Day.
“This is ridiculous — this is a publicity stunt!” Kimmel joked about Renner’s injuries as the actor continued waving his cane and kicking his legs up from his seat like a vaudeville performer.
“Now if there was any question as to who the toughest Avenger was, that’s settled now, right?” Kimmel added, drawing cheers from the crowd, which included Renner’s mother and other relatives. “Forget Downey, forget Hemsworth, forget these guys — it’s you, you’re the guy.”
Renner interjected by offering Scarlett Johansson’s name before shyly conceding, “Yeah, I guess so.”
Renner, who gave his first interview since the accident to ABC News’ Diane Sawyer in late March, showed his physical recovery during the late-night appearance.
He had also posted a video of himself in March walking slowly on an “anti-gravity” treadmill during physical therapy.
While attempting to stop a snowplow from hitting his nephew, Renner was crushed by the 14,330-pound snowcat and hospitalized for a slew of injuries, including eight broken ribs, a collapsed lung and a broken tibia, shoulder, mandible, face, jaw, eye socket, knee, clavicle and both ankles.
“I chose to survive,” Renner told Sawyer. “You can’t kill me. No way.”
Renner recalled to Kimmel that many of his friends thought he was dead. He described lying in the hospital bed as messages flooded in, feeling “like it was an open casket and you’re living through it.”
However, the “Hawkeye” actor made light of the incident, calling it “a New Year’s resolution,” since his injuries forced him to quit smoking and led him to lose 20 pounds.
“Easiest way to quit smoking!” he exclaimed to an applauding crowd.
Renner, who was on the show to promote his upcoming Disney+ series, “Rennervations,” said his first thought after waking from a rib surgery was how light his schedule would be.
“My first conscious thought was like, ‘Holy hell, my calendar is freed up for the rest of the year.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah!’” he said, raising both arms in the air. “I was making so many plans, I was gonna buy a boat, I was gonna live in Mexico. Cause my year was pretty jammed up until I got crushed. Now I’m like, ‘Nobody can mess with me, I’m free.’”
“Rennervations,” which follows Renner’s efforts to buy phased-out government vehicles and repurpose them to revitalize communities, will begin streaming Wednesday on Disney+.
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