Jeremy Renner recounts his 2023 snowcat accident in Lake Tahoe, crushing 38 bones while saving 25 stranded guests, crediting titanium implants and willpower—especially for his daughter’s March 28th birthday—to his survival. He contrasts modern comfort-seeking with resilience, using hyperbaric chambers, cold plunges, and breathing techniques (like Lamaze-inspired kneeling near trees) to manage pain and anxiety. Renner’s Renovation Foundation repurposes vehicles for foster youth, keeping overhead at 8%, proving shared struggle fosters deeper purpose than fleeting distractions. Their discussion suggests adversity refines character, but only if met with love and action—not fear or complacency. [Automatically generated summary]
And the love and fuel to fuel your will, I had in spades.
I feel like I could pretty much do anything if I set my mind to it.
When it was my essential part of my life, my recovery, was a 24-hour day job.
When typically I do many, many other things, right, as we all do in our lives, but when all my focus, like even parenting, was out the window until I can get better.
So I had to do that first.
So that being the central part of every thought, every fiber, every cell in my body was geared towards a one-way street of recovery.
Oh, I'm getting fucking better.
So I just got better.
What's the alternative?
I was brought back somehow, someway.
And it would be a disservice to not do all the things I'm supposed to be doing and want to be doing.
So it just took a lot of effort.
And it looked a lot of support.
Heck, dude, I mean, there's hundreds of people involved in helping me not die again.
But at the end of the day, the recovery, as you know, everybody's injured in some sort of way.
It's a lonely road.
It's only you.
No matter how much help you have or PT you have, if your tendons go, whatever the heck happens, you still have to put in the work every day and endure the pain and manage the pain and mitigate it.
It can be quite lonely, but I always found that my daughter and my family, as I see their faces, when I get better, I could stand up, let's say, or not pee in a jar.
I could get in a wheelchair.
Any sort of milestone, I'd see their faces get a little bit less horrified, even relieved, even quite joyful even.
So as much damage as I did to my family and their hearts, me getting better can...
And I host my family at my house up there, like 25 people.
Every post-Christmas to New Year's all the time.
Family, friends, whoever, just kind of come up and we can celebrate the holidays together.
Go skiing, all these type of things.
But we had a big kind of snowmageddon type snow event that, you know, shut down the mountain that I live on at the top of Lake Tahoe at about 8,000 feet elevation.
And we got just tons and tons of snow.
But it happens often.
Maybe not that intense of a storm.
But so much so where we were cut off from anywhere else.
We were snowed in.
Fine.
I'm prepared for that stuff.
Three days without power.
Prepared for it.
It's fine.
We can have fun.
It's actually a relief.
All the cell phones go off.
All the iPads go away and computers and everybody's just playing card games with headlamps on.
I mean, it's a riot.
So we had a good time.
You know, the food supply was still good.
But, you know, it's New Year's Day and we're getting a break in the weather.
So I decided I needed to clear the roads and see, come out for air, essentially.
And in doing so, that's when the accident sort of transpired.
And it's more of a routine type of thing to have a half-mile-long driveway up there.
And I have to maintain it myself, so I have a snowcat and a bunch of other snow removal type equipment.
There was a bunch of vehicles, snowmobiles even, things that got stuck in the driveway because it was a lot of extra snow.
And some of it was very light, and then it got very icy and hard, so you're sinking down like three or four feet into it.
And it was a hot mess, so I had to...
Try to dig all that stuff out using the snowcat, pulling this stuff out.
This thing, a snowcat, to describe it in words is pretty difficult, but it's like a tank.
It's probably, I don't know, 12 feet wide.
The tracks on each side, so it spins like a tank, like a skid steer.
So, you have to step on the tracks, you see, to get into the cab to operate it.
So, stepping on the tracks is a normal thing to do.
You just don't do it while you're operating it, right?
You run the thing, you drive it, and it's just easy.
It's a thumb, go forward, reverse, and you're neutral, and that's it.
It's really easy to operate.
But the accident happened because you have to get in and out off on those tracks, and I...
It hit the thumb thing and it threw me off and I was going towards my nephew so I had to jump back on and try to stop it from killing him because it was going to crush him between the truck and that big blade that I have.
And yeah, I mean, all the doctors were like, dude, I don't know how your eye's still operating or still working, but I think because I was on ice, because I did see it, I'm like, well, maybe I'm going to put this eye on ice and just kind of rolled into it.
I saw my eye with my other eye, right?
And I'm like, I'm going to be able to keep that thing, because I'm on like...
An icy asphalt driveway that's off of my driveway, right, at the top of the road.
So it wasn't really great for impact of getting ran over.
I wish I was on a snowpack.
It would have been maybe a little bit easier.
It would push me into snow, right?
But it wasn't.
So I just kind of rolled onto it, just like maybe I could kind of put the eye on ice until I could figure out how to breathe.
Oh, my God.
You know, I had to sort of laugh at it because it's weird to sort of think about that, you know?
Well, the guy that invented this procedure worked at the hospital in Reno because there's a lot of crushing injuries that happened because of the ski resorts and mines that are in the area.
So I got really lucky to get this doctor.
But it took four doctors to get to this guy.
So says my family.
I was out in a coma.
But once they found this guy who was on vacation, the mayor of Reno actually called him and said, you've got to get back and help my friend out.
And so he rushed out and he's just like, this is what he does for a living.
He's like, oh, this is easy.
I can't wait to do this for this guy.
So it relieved on my family.
They were such relief because they were like, oh, he's going to lose his eye.
We're going to cut off his leg.
I mean, all this kind of tragic sort of prognosis, whatever you want to call it, right?
So this guy comes in.
No, no, it's fine.
We're going to hammer this thing in.
We're going to do this.
We're going to do his faceplate.
We're going to do this.
And just lucky that the orbital bone that broke and the cheekbone that broke, they only wanted to do that because my face as an actor made me want to save my cheekbone, I guess.
Not that I cared about it, but...
But yeah, he fixed up all my ribs and they used like this mesh and he has this sort of weird...
Way to kind of handle, if you fix one or two of the ribs that are all broken, the rest will kind of fall into place.
The body's pretty miraculous.
Just give it a little direction and then it heals on itself and it'll grow the bone.
So it's not as much titanium in my ribs as one might think for all those breaks.
I'm going to be, you know, I feel like I'm maybe 110% just because spiritually and mentally I'm so much better.
I got so many gifts from dying and coming back.
That, yeah, I'm 150%.
My body will always be, look, my body's aging, so I have to fight against age.
Well, recovery is age-reversing.
It's the same stuff that people are doing just to reverse age.
I just do it just because it's my recovery, and I have to for the rest of my life, just to prevent inflammation and discomfort and swelling, things like that.
Randomly with the punctured lung and all this broke, the shoulder, the collarbone dislocation, all this stuff, that healed pretty quickly.
But that doesn't require gravity and force under your legs, like your legs have to take, right?
So that took a little bit longer in the legs, both ankles, right?
Those are under trauma and plates in those.
You know, this is all a pipe, essentially, a piece of rebar in my whole lower leg.
So that took a little bit longer.
But the ribs, ironically, it was only painful for, I feel like, a couple weeks.
I also had these, like, plastic suitcases for my lungs because I had to let it bleed out and this stuff was going in.
I don't know what goop was in that thing, but I had to carry those things around for a while.
Once I got rid of those, I was kind of sitting up a bit more, and I felt good once I was kind of sitting up.
But there's still, as you can imagine, so much trauma, so many places.
But I think the longest was really getting up to stand up, to walk, to get all your joints to work properly again, to relearn to walk, relearn to move because you really kind of have to.
There's a lot of atrophy, as you can imagine, that happens.
But I was standing up and moving around.
I got into a chair probably by February after like three weeks.
Wow.
And the more I can move, the faster you heal.
You're getting more blood flow.
You're getting your body to work better.
Help with my attitude and will to get out and sit up.
You know, all the things.
Each of these things are like milestones.
And I would just like, yeah!
And then move forward to the next thing and set a goal for myself.
Even if it was just like to sit up and turn.
I didn't have to set such big goals.
To reach too far.
To keep my confidence high.
Because I keep reaching these goals and just kept going and going and going.
And I find myself, again, it's 24 hours a day.
So what do I have to do today?
Well, I don't even have to ask.
It's got to get better.
And, you know, it just kept going.
And whatever thing, and there's so many things to attack to get better, it's like I never got bored.
I just had all these bands and stuff.
I remember being in a wheelchair and I'd wrap around like this desk and I'd be like a leg press.
You know, all these interesting ways to try to strengthen my body and get better.
Whatever wasn't, you know, anything that would work, I would do it.
I'd say no to nothing, say yes to everything, and let's try it.
It's part of the reason why I wrote the book because it's a lonely place where people are struggling in recovery and when it's a lifetime recovery too.
I hope they can find something they can grab onto.
Like if this guy can get overcome this, I can get out of my own way here and maybe think of it a little differently.
The only thing we have control of ever in life and perpetuity is our perspective.
I could easily just go be victimized and cry about it and my career is over.
It's not even part of the narrative.
It's not even in the conversation.
It's like I'm getting better every day for the rest of my life.
That's it.
There's only one way to go.
What's the alternative, Joe?
What is the alternative?
I keep saying that to me.
What's the alternative?
I'm not going to stumble around through life.
I wasn't brought back here just to suffer.
That's not happening.
I'd say unplug the machine.
I'm done.
I'm out of here.
It's way better than being dead.
You know what I mean?
I'm not going to come back and just waddle and limp my way through life.
And I think maybe it was around, if I got home on January 13th, Friday the 13th.
I think it was probably less than a month, probably like beginning of February, because I had all my molars and stuff got pushed in, so my mouth's a hot mess, my jaw's broken.
But I'd have night terrors, as you would, being awake through that trauma.
And I bit down, and the tooth was just in a certain spot and just cracked my molar.
And it goes down to the nerve and that.
I'm like, oh, I feel that pain.
But I'm on all this OxyContin.
I don't feel it.
Hmm, maybe I don't need to be on that shit.
So I had to go get that emergency extraction and get a post put in on my back molar.
And I said, well, I'll take it one more time just for the tooth pain or whatever even what the dentist gave me.
I think I took the dentist stuff, whatever that was.
I mean, I was always using the humor to find my sobriety.
If I could land a joke, that means I'm reading the room and I'm hitting the timing right, whatever it is, you know, right?
So I wanted my, I needed my mind.
I needed my wit.
I needed my will to recover.
I needed sleep and I needed my brain.
And the drugs kind of numb my brain.
As they would, right?
As they'd numb your whole body.
So I just wanted off of them.
And I don't like how I feel.
You feel muddy.
And I just didn't like the feeling.
You know, it came with a price, but I got the okay to take a little fiber of Oxy to sleep on if you needed to mitigate some pain, just so I could sleep.
I'm like, okay, maybe I'll do that if it happens.
And I did once or twice or three times, maybe after that moment.
But I got through it.
And I got off it.
But I got off it because I cracked that tooth.
And that, I felt pain.
Like, that is like, that's not going to let me sleep at all.
It's a heartbeat in my brain.
My face is just like throbbing, right, as you would for anybody.
So I said like, oh, then I don't need to take the pain meds.
So then I started really working with all my blood panels.
Big, giant, wide, 16-vile blood panels.
And that started to be my new course of recovery, of a cellular way, in a blood way.
And that's where I really started to get strong.
I was moving around.
I was mobile.
All the bones are healed.
By this time, it's like a year's gone by, but now I started working on cellular and blood health, and that's when I got to, like, my skin started to look great, you know, because your blood tells you what your body's producing and not producing, right?
So that was a great report card or barometer of where I was at, why I'm not, you know, where my mitochondrial levels are at, anything was at.
So it was really, really great.
Part of my recovery.
And that's what I'll continue to do and still continue to do today.
And that was really my first shot at allowing myself to think that there's a future and I'm not going to live a life of full-time recovery for the rest of my life.
Oh, I can actually go do some other things that I enjoy doing with people in kind of a normal way.
So I was without a cane, without anything by the time by June and summer came around.
So I'm moving around.
I'm moving around with inflammation and getting downstairs very slowly.
But as you would, as long as you're patient, as I was, as aggressive I was with my recovery, I allowed patients to also live within that aggressive attack on each joint or each inflammation or wherever it was.
I do allow patients.
Because I allow myself to push hard, hard, hard, hard.
I listen to my body.
The body says, fuck off.
I'm like, all right.
I'll chill out for a second and then keep going.
But I got to live life and that was so rewarding to my spirit and my confidence, which you need in those kind of dire times.
And I keep going.
And then, like I said, when we got to getting back to work because I got so ready.
Maybe I'm down to like four hours a day of recovery by the end of that first year.
I'm like, I'm gonna go back to work.
I need to get back out into the world and use life as my recovery and still only spend four hours a day on hyperbaric chamber, red light, whatever the heck I could do to...
I mix it all up.
It's a bunch of different stuff.
A lot of heat, a lot of vibration.
Power plate stuff.
That was really great for numbing the nerve endings, my back of my knees, back of my ankles, that kind of stuff.
You would stand on it, and it was supposed to just do a bunch of stuff for your hormones and endocrine system and all sorts of different stuff just by the vibration.
If you've ever been in a car, you're on the freeway and it has a misalignment or it's a little shaky, or you've got a flat tire, it feels like I've got four flat tires when I'm running.
It looks great.
It looks like, oh, this guy has no problem with this guy.
What a great blessing to have all those people, even the EMTs and all the people that were there, the life-saving stuff that did all the stuff that they had to do, man.
There's so much...
And I'm really known in that community, especially in the EMTs and all that sort of stuff.
I have a lot of firefighter friends and all that stuff, so it's just like a...
You're just getting a little extra juice and love from these people.
I knew...
One of my best friends is a firefighter in that area, Jesse, and he's just retired.
He got the phone call from his buddy who had to, like, stab my chest and release the pressure from the lung and da-da-da, like, on the ice.
And he's the one that says, look, dude, Jesse, Jeremy, we did the best we could, dude.
I went by every ENT, even the pilot that flew me up there and just had to give everyone the biggest squeeze and apologize if I was a pain in the ass or whatever it was, man.
It's that reminds me of just why I'm back anyway and the only thing that you take with you is love, man.
Whether they're in a marriage, they just fucking despise, you know, all this stuff.
You're spending too much time doing what?
Why, why, why?
Because of fear.
Because of fear, you get trapped, and it's too difficult to get out, and, you know, they get too deep and buried into some place that they get, I don't know, paint themselves in a corner, you know?
It is sad, but it's also, I mean, there's an amazing example that you can...
Shine to the rest of the world that maybe people don't have to go through what you went through to realize that most of what you're thinking about all day, especially if you're one of those people that's wrapped up in social media, most of the things you're thinking about all day are just nonsense.
One of the reasons why I wrote the book is I hope there's things that I learned and the gifts that I received from Yeah.
and struggle.
It doesn't have to be a physical struggle, but, you know, it's a certain way to think and perspective to work your way through it because it is a lonely place.
And I think there's something beautiful about the narrative of an author to a reader or even just audio, which is even more intense because you get the 911 call and it's kind of dramatic in that sense, but, like, it's pretty intimate.
I think you can really move the needle for somebody.
The more open and honest and vulnerable I am in sharing the narrative, the more I have a chance at connecting with the reader or listener.
And it's so difficult for people to trust the process or to trust that it will get better.
And this is unfortunately why a lot of people end their lives because they do not think it's going to get better.
And you hear it from so many people that almost took their life or failed when they tried to take their life and now realize, oh my god, I was so wrong.
It does get better.
I am better.
Everything's better.
And I just didn't see the light.
I didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I thought there was just nothing but this feeling that I couldn't endure.
It's just so hard for people that have never gone through something before.
If your life has been really easy and then all of a sudden you're tasked with one of the most difficult burdens ever, overcoming the fear and the feeling of wanting to end life because you can't take it.
I remember one time, I mean, this is a minor suffering in comparison, but one time I went on this hunting trip on Prince of Wales Island, which rains like 350 days a year.
And so we were up there for a week just getting drenched.
And, you know, you're camping, so you're in a tent, and you think, oh, well, I'll be dry in the tent.
You're not dry in the tent.
There's no dry.
There's no such thing as dry.
I remember I turned my headlamp on in the tent one.
Because I had to pee.
And I was going to step out of the tent to go to the bathroom in the rain.
And when I pressed the headlamp inside my tent, all I saw inside the tent was water vapor.
It was just filled with moisture.
There was just water, like droplets, all flying around inside the tent.
I'm like, oh my god.
You're never going to be dry.
There's no dry.
And, you know, it was just...
Miserable, but fun.
I was with good friends, and we had a good time.
Then I came back to LA, you know, a week later, and I remember I called my friend Steve Rinella.
I called because he's the one who took me on the trip, and I said, dude, it's sunny out, and I've never appreciated the sun like this before.
I'm at a level of happiness that I don't think I've ever felt before.
I'm just sitting outside with my eyes closed, just taking the sun.
It was wonderful.
LA is always sunny.
You get so used to it.
It's like you're a trust fund kid who can't appreciate money because you've always had it.
It doesn't mean anything to you.
But now all of a sudden just being drenched for seven days and being in that sun, I was like, ugh.
And then it made me realize, oh, you need to suffer.
Meaning to suffer, you're never going to appreciate this life.
And either you voluntarily suffer or you will suffer involuntarily because life, regular life will make you suffer.
Well, if you look at life today, and if you look at society today, we have unprecedented levels of depression and unprecedented levels of anxiety and unhappiness.
Yet, it's probably the safest time ever.
And it's probably the easiest time ever.
It's so easy that poor people are fat.
That's how easy it is.
Like, that's never been the case.
All throughout history, poor people were starving.
And poor people are fat now.
Like, that's how easy it is to live, just to exist.
So, I mean, not saying that being poor is easy.
It's certainly not.
It's certainly a struggle.
But it's way easier than starving to death.
Like, this is like an unprecedented easy time.
And because of that, and because there's this narrative that people have to constantly seek comfort, to seek vacation and relaxation and retirement and all that bullshit.
And so that's in your head.
There's this softness to existence and so everything that comes your way is overwhelming.
Somebody said this once and it's like a great quote that I remember.
The worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you regardless of how small that is.
So if the worst thing that's ever happened to you is like, I remember my girlfriend broke up with me when I was 18. And I was like, oh, I couldn't believe that I thought I was going to be with her forever.
I was so sad.
And then I think back, oh my god, that was the best thing that ever happened.
She was a nightmare.
But back then, I thought, I was probably a nightmare too.
And so you would try to find a time where it wasn't difficult.
And so then it became the thing that everybody focused on.
Focused on chilling, relaxing.
And the people that I know that don't do anything and don't take any chances and don't take any risks and don't exercise and just seek comfort are the most miserable, anxiety-ridden people I know.
I've never been happier, more connected to humans, more connected to my daughter, more connected to myself, more centered in my spirit, where I am right now, where I'll go, where I'll be, where I always am and always have been.
I haven't gone into that, even yet, to like, oh, what causes inflammation?
What am I eating that does that?
I haven't really gotten that far into it yet.
I'm still...
I'm sure I will.
There was a doctor who also helped me eat stuff, and I have people prepare some certain things for me, but I couldn't tell you what causes inflammation that I put in my mouth.
It's just amazing how these stories can be so inspirational for other people too, which is why I'm really glad you wrote your book.
Because these stories, like autobiographies, especially of people that you admire, that you've seen in movies before, it's like those struggles, they're so real.
And when someone's going through something themselves and they can turn to your book...
Initially, I have a ghostwriter who helped me because I've never written a book.
I've written a lot, but I've never written a book.
So I wanted to get the format right.
So we would work through this format.
It's almost like an outline.
So we'd just do interview by each of the sections of this outline that we put out.
So then we would just talk like this.
Let's talk about this thing.
Take me moment by moment.
In the accident.
I'm like, all right, let's do that.
And we'd meet every day for like two, three hours, however long I could sustain going word by word on it.
And we recorded all the things.
And I would write on my own because it would kick up new memories and start writing about the Lamaze thing.
And, oh, gosh, that came up.
And that became a whole chapter in the book about breathing, my awareness to breathing.
I hope it became so important in my life.
Anyway, so I just kept going and writing and writing and writing.
Then I would do talks to companies.
I would speak to kids at schools.
All this was part of the writing experience because you can ask me the same question, but we're in this environment.
But then if I'm with my family and I answer the same question, it's the same kind of answer but different.
So I kept learning more and more.
Data and information was stored in my brain and my heart and my spirit, and I had to unearth it and put it down into words, which I found to be the most difficult thing.
Because as we speak, like I'm doing now, it's free to speak whatever you want, but to write down the words, oh wait, there's accountability to the words because they're written.
And you have more word choice.
My brain doesn't operate as fast as I'd like to for my vocabulary.
I'd probably drop way too many F-bombs instead of really great words that I do know.
So it was nice to be able to take the time and spend the agony to really kind of express Word by word through it, you know, in a very real honest way.
It's more like a diary, a recounting diary, than it was trying to be fancy with words and overcomplicate something that's really quite so simple.
So everybody thinks, oh, breathing, what's the big deal?
It's like nothing.
Have you ever read James Nestor's Breath?
It's actually Breathe, I guess.
But it's an amazing book on breathing techniques and the history of breathing techniques and all the different things that people have achieved with breathing techniques, including holotropic breathing, which achieves psychedelic states of consciousness and all these different feats of incredible physical endurance that people have achieved through breath work.
It's a pretty amazing book.
It was a guest of mine on the podcast a few years back.
But I read his book and started really getting into it and really trying to practice different breathing exercises.
There's a bunch of breathing exercises you can use for anxiety, for overcoming very stressful situations.
But when you say that to most people, oh, breathing, they're like, oh, you're one of those guys.
I think the problem is you just get trapped in that feeling and then the moment something comes up that's very difficult Yeah, that causes you to spiral again.
I think it's one of the most difficult things about this whole audition process that actors go through is that there's this That's a golden carrot that's at the end of the stick.
And if you do a good job, you might be a fucking movie star.
I moved to L.A. to be in a movie, be in a movie that was big enough that I would play in Modesto, California, where I'm from, because you don't get all the movies there, right?
And being a part in that movie that I wouldn't have to tell my family, you know, I'm the guy in the red shirt waving in the background.
It's a part big enough that you would just know I'm in the movie.
And I got that, all those goals, in the first job I ever did on camera.
In this National Lampoon senior trip movie.
So then I had to recalibrate now new goals.
So I'll get myself...
And I was working enough.
So I never...
My goals were always to...
By the time I got Dahmer and Hurt Locker and all these kind of stuff, I was ready for that stuff.
Well, most of them look like, you know, Schoolteachers.
There's like one or two guys that one guy was like, kind of built like huge, big guy, brown guy.
The rest of them were like, you know, the guy I know did three tours.
He looks like he's totally out of shape.
His stomach is way bigger than his chest.
He's just kind of doo-doo-doo-doo-doo.
This guy did three tours.
This guy's no joke.
It's all mental.
It's all such a mental game because you have to be cool in those high intense situations because you're dealing with 155 explosives that'll blow this building off the block.
And the level of intensity is really interesting.
They were so comfortable around C4 and all these things.
You've got to be careful.
These blasting caps and all these things that people were getting injured all the time.
They got really uncomfortable when I took them to a bar in LA.
And I wouldn't want to do that because we wanted to be very authentic to what we were doing.
We are still making a movie, but let's live in this world.
And look, the narrative is the characters that live in this bizarre world in a very relevant time, in this war that we're in, and also the struggles of, you know, soldier and civilian life.
And because they were civilians and now they became soldiers, they'd be put in prison for life for doing the shit they're getting paid to do now.
And that was a wonderful sort of outcome of the movie of how it bridged that sort of gap or the struggles with PTSD and coming back from this harrowing sort of existence and war.
And then coming back in like the cereal aisle.
That example of like, oh, really?
Or in the rain and you appreciate the sun.
It's just such a polar opposite.
This is my existence.
It became such a really wonderful starting point for wives to deal with their husbands that came back.
They can kind of understand a little bit of what they might have gone through just in general.
The broad strokes of how hard it is.
And then to come back and change diapers.
You know what I mean?
That became such a powerful thing in that narrative that I found after we did it and we're showing it to all the military bases.
It's always going to be a special experience in my life and I'll always be connected to a lot of soldiers because of that.
There was a thing about that movie that made you think in a way, or made me think in a way that I don't think I ever thought before.
Like, oh, I never considered what this transition to civilian life is like after dealing with the unbelievable stress of being in a war zone, defusing bombs.
It was that kind of movie that's just like, oh, my God.
It just gives you anxiety.
And it also just makes you really reflect and think about what war.
Yeah, it's interesting.
How do you decide what roles to pick?
When you're at this sort of stage in your life where you're so well-known, people come to you with things, and you have to decide whether or not this project is something that resonates with you.
The central part of my life for so long was my career.
And then my daughter came around, and then she's number one.
So then I would do the job that would...
Allow me still to be a father because I'm not going to not be a father because my job takes me away for long periods of time and I'm just not doing that in far places.
So I'm not working out of the country anymore once my daughter was born.
So I always had reach and access to my daughter as fast as I needed to be.
And then now, after the incident, it's even tightened up more and loosened up more because my daughter is now 12 and she doesn't need me.
Do you really choose things that you're actually passionate about that fit within these parameters and allow you to live your life the way you want to?
I'm very busy doing the Renovation Foundation, right?
Which is a huge...
Big central part of my life with my family that runs this charitable foundation in my community in Lake Tahoe for foster youth and disadvantaged youth and giving them opportunities that they don't have these poor kids.
I've been off it lately for the last few weeks where I literally just check it when I'm taking a shit and that's it.
I look to see if there's anything crazy going on in the world just so I know what's happening.
But I don't ever get involved.
I don't ever...
Argue with people or post things and I just see people doing it and I'm like, you're losing your fucking mind and I've had conversations with friends and they're like, you know, you know what fucking this and that and that and this.
It initially started with a show that I produced and put on Disney +, which is called Renovations.
I didn't like to see a lot of vehicles go to waste, like purpose-built vehicles, like a city bus or a fire truck and all these things.
Supposed to go long, long, long ways, but they just replace them even though they're perfectly good vehicles.
So I wanted to repurpose those and help them, help communities in need.
So it's taking, I built one to be a box truck to be a water treatment plant to give kids in villages with terrible water and be able to reverse osmosis their water and give them drinkable water at their school.
Or take a, there's a...
We took a city bus and turned it into a dance studio, a mobile dance studio for these kids in Mexico.
Just these creative sort of things.
It's kind of like Pit My Ride, but with real valuable things.
Just take these really cool purpose-built trucks and make it something really spectacular for these kids.
It's all kids-driven to give them what their needs are.
And then it just went into, I didn't want to make it about just vehicles.
When I wanted to start the foundation, it became a wonderful calling card.
And then I started the foundation, and my sister works for DCFS, which was Child Protective Services in Los Angeles County.
And one of my best girlfriends in Reno, she also works for CPS, Child Protective Services, there.
So I've been working with foster youth for many, many, many years privately.
And now I just wanted to really get invested into the community.
So I started small in northern, greater northern Nevada.
And my sister now is running it, and Shayna is running it as well with me, and the whole family has now gotten involved.
And it's been really wonderful to come back from the incident, have this be a central goal for us to celebrate our time together as a family and to give back to these kids that are in great need.
And it has been a dream of mine that I've been wanting to do for a long time and now do it publicly.
I've been doing it privately for a long time.
And to really make a big splash and make a lot of movement for these kids.
And I think it's one of the reasons why I was brought back outside of all the other things.
But I think there's something working in my favor to come back outside my family.
And I think it is my reach to kids and my ability to...
Have a great effect for them.
And it's been a couple years now and it's already been moved the mountains for kids already and will continue to do so.
This is like me breathing.
This is easy.
I love this.
This is a part of my fiber, my body.
I'm the oldest of seven in my family.
I've been changing diapers and living as the oldest.
It's sort of my birthright to be able to do.
What makes it even cooler is that I'm a Marvel superhero.
So I have like a reach and access to these kids that they didn't even listen to.
They're like, oh cool, let's go to camp with Hawkeye.
This is dope.
And they all show up with plastic sacks, right?
And this is like all their valuables in their life.
And it makes me weep, right?
And this is all they're worth.
And they show up with hefty bags.
All of them.
So we give them rollers with their names on it and a passport.
It's just like a journal and they can...
I'm going to change the narrative of this.
You're a traveler now.
You're a world traveler.
You're not carrying your trash around for all your worth in it.
Your worth is much bigger than that.
We're going to just planting seeds like that in their head and then creating community for them, creating opportunities for them, safe places for them, giving them more educated stuff.
We brought in a recording studio bus for them to touch all these instruments that they'd never have access to.
Who knows what that does?
I don't care.
Let it have access to things.
Give these kids opportunities that they deserve.
This is the future of our fucking planet.
Why aren't we giving more time and effort to that?
It's the future of our world, man.
Let's give them all the tools.
We need another Elon.
We need other super smart, amazing people, man.
We need that.
We need other leaders.
What do we give in our youth?
Especially our foster youth, man.
It's not a good look.
They've gone through a lot of struggles, these kids, man.
And they're not going to struggle, not on my dime, not on my time.
I love, it's a great focus for me that's outside of, it's things I enjoy, right?
I still do things that I enjoy.
I just get to do it with these kids and have, they teach me so much.
I learn so much to keep me in a really youthful spirit.
It's harrowing to hear what they've been through, Joe.
I don't like to know.
My sister knows all about it.
Shana knows all about it because they get the phone calls.
They have relationships with a lot of these kids.
They know, dude, I mean, you'd probably react like I would.
You want to flip a table.
You want to hurt some people.
So I'd prefer not to know how they got touched and who did it and this kind of stuff.
I just choose to focus on let's give these kids a...
Plant some seeds of hope.
And I'm good at that shit.
That's awesome.
And I love it.
So we're on jet skiing.
They've never even been to this lake.
So whatever the heck it is, new experiences, new joy, new friends.
They're all crying at the end of this camp because they had such a good damn time.
One of them was getting adopted and she was crying because, like, I can't come back because I'm not a foster kid anymore.
I got adopted.
They're like, no, you can come back!
You know, you did good then when she didn't want to get adopted.
Like, ah, it means we're doing something right for these kids.
And we're going to continue doing it.
And we're doing it not only just as a camp, but we're doing, like, lots of programs throughout the year to keep the community of the foster youth community together.
A lot of these kids are brothers and sisters that never get to see each other because they're in separate homes, separate cities.
One's in Vegas, one's in Reno, right?
Dude, you can't do that.
You can't do that.
So we're doing our best to...
Unite community, right?
We need each other.
These kids need each other.
Even beyond, they don't need me.
They need access and reasons to be together.
So it's helping the foster parents.
It's helping the kids.
It's whatever we can do.
We're going to start building youth centers as well.
We'll be building homes as well in the future with the foundation.
But we're starting step by step, breath at a time, brick by brick, and building camps and activities and education for them.
Well, it's like, look, states have foster programs, right?
But there's gaps in the system, man.
It's like kids are forgotten.
And then some are, you know, it's tragic.
But put a spotlight on something, put energy into something, it builds.
And I got a loud voice and a big heart.
And I'm very actionable in what I do, and that's why the foundation's growing and making the moves and paving ways for these kids.
So I'll keep doing it, man.
It's easy.
How long have you been doing this now?
Publicly, only a couple years.
It just started out.
So, you know, then it's like learning about, oh, the nonprofit stuff.
It's like, oh, man, it's like going out and asking for money.
So I don't do that.
I'll go do, like, voiceover jobs and, like, put money in the account for – I hate asking for money for foundation stuff, you know.
I'll let somebody else kind of bother that.
I do – I stay in my lane.
I work with the kids and work with the ideas and the programs and my sister and those guys in the – And the board deal with, like, you're having to raise money and all those kind of things.
I think there's, I think, you know, there's birth order, right?
There's also being in the 70s in a small town where I was a latchkey kid, right?
I had a free reign.
I was seven years old and a key to the house.
I didn't have to come home until the streetlights came on.
Right, me too.
I made mistakes.
I broke windows and slingshots and stole shit and lighted up the cigarette butt and my mom's and all this stuff and I got caught and sometimes I learned and I reprimand myself.
I self-policed myself.
I was a very honest kid.
You know, there's a lot of things.
I had a bicycle and then that was like freedom.
That's where I began, like, oh, I have real freedom.
I got a fishing pole, got on my bike, and just went off into another county.
Like, that wouldn't happen today.
I would never allow my daughter to walk across the street.
Well, I lived all over the place, but I lived when I was 7 to 11. I lived in San Francisco from 11 to 13. I lived in Florida from 13 till 24. I lived in Boston.
Even though I talk for a living and I'm a public figure, I'm not really an extrovert, which is really odd.
I don't really like...
Which sounds crazy for someone who gets a lot of attention.
I don't need it.
Which is probably why I get it in some strange...
I was very socially anxious when I was a kid.
I would get super nervous when I had to talk to a bank teller.
I remember one time I had to deposit money in a bank and I was like, why am I freaking out like this?
This is so weird.
But eventually overcame all that stuff and then...
Through martial arts, traveling around all throughout my youth from the time I was 15 until I was 22. So all I did was travel around the country and competing.
So I had a very bizarre life in that I didn't have the normal high school life of partying and hanging out.
No, I was flying to California to fight.
It was weird.
It was a very weird life.
You know, I still wasn't an extrovert.
Like, I didn't really learn how to talk in groups of people until I started teaching.
Until I started teaching martial arts.
And then that's how I learned how to public speak.
But I was publicly speaking about something that I was very good at.
So it was like I commanded sort of attention just because I would demonstrate to them things that I was doing.
And in demonstrating and talking, it made sense that I was able to talk.
You know, it's like I was really good at it so I could show them.
I'm going to demonstrate something to you, and then I'd do it, and they'd be like, holy shit!
I'd be like, I'm going to show you how to do this.
And then, if you listen to me, like, I taught at Boston University when I was 19, and it was a real counter torture GPA.
It was like, pass, fail, A. And I'd say, all you have to do is show up and try, and you get an A. And if you can't show up, call me, tell me you can't make it.
And you'll be fine.
If you fuck off, I'm gonna fail you.
But if you just try, you get an A. And then it counts towards your GPA.
know from there's just some positive things that kind of come out from that right like I like I went to a different school every year of my life at least until I got to high school but I was in the same town I didn't move around a lot maybe just in the town I did divorce and all that sort of stuff our schools were full
whatever it was so I had to
Either engage with people, all brand new people, each grade, new school, new grade.
And then, you know, you're growing up.
I was more shy and I think more like you, like an introvert.
So either I was very gregarious or I just was an observer and I just watched.
So you just make choices.
And that's why I became an observer.
But with that, I don't know.
I like that part of me.
And I can be extroverted like I'm an actor and a thing, but I'm still more insular and quiet.
Well, I mean, it was hard, but I wouldn't have wanted it any other way because I think it made me different.
And I think there's, unfortunately, if you are in like a small town and you grow up in that town and you never leave that town, your perspective is very limited.
And again, it made me form my own opinions instead of adopting a conglomeration of opinions that everybody around me had.
You know, and I went from...
Very liberal and progressive San Francisco in the 1970s during the Vietnam War to living in Florida where it was like completely the opposite, like super conservative and kind of retarded.
And I remember just being around people like, why are they even...
Why do they even think like this?
This is crazy.
It was so strange to me to have this, like, complete juxtaposition, almost like a cultural 180.
But it also made me realize, like, wow, there's a lot of different ways to think.
There's a lot of different ways to engage with life.
Well, don't we, like, especially growing up, right?
Because you're saying, like, 7, 8, 13, 14, all those years, we look to our friends and friendship groups as sort of, like, kind of...
Help develop ourselves and kind of be a reflection upon ourselves.
If you don't have it, you have other things that you turn to.
Like you said, it could have been a terrible thing if you stayed in the same place and you had the same four or four dues and then how limited your life would have been to staying in San Fran.
Like you said, there's a real good positive thing to take from.
Being removed from stability, removed from, right?
That's all anxiety-inducing.
Or it could be the perspective, right?
The perspective could be, but if it's a positive perspective, you know, to lean on.
Yeah, like you said, I like how I came to the thing, and it drove you into all the things that you probably like about yourself today.
I do think there's a certain power to following instincts, which I've always done for whatever reason.
You know, there's a pull that you have towards a certain direction, even if it's like massively uncomfortable.
Sometimes you have to realize like...
Okay, let's go like this is what I'm supposed to do and that that is very hard to do but once you do it a few times and then you start saying That there's a little voice in your head like that motherfuckers never let me down I'm gonna keep serving that voice whatever that voice is.
I'm gonna keep listening Even though people are like, what are you doing?
What are the numbers of people that become successful actors?
Is it like a tenth of a percent?
It's probably less than that.
If you could get a chart of how many people move to Los Angeles to try to make it in show business and how many make it, it's got to be an astronomical number.
But my thought was like, fuck, somebody's doing it.
Somebody did it.
Why can't I do it?
And then people would say, you know what, with the odds you're going to make it?
I don't know.
Why am I thinking about that?
It can be done.
People have done it.
But you have to be willing to just really fucking throw yourself into something and know that Especially in the beginning, there's no time to fuck off here.
If you really want to do something that's really hard to do, you've got to be all in.
Because there's too many people that are all in.
You're competing with them.
You're not competing with these half-steppers, these people that are kind of dipping in and dipping out.
They're there as an example for you to not live your life.
People, like, what the terrible choices that people make, because most of the people that were in there were guilty, you know, and the terrible choices that these people make.
And, like, what happened to you when you were young?
Like, why did you become a person who murdered your husband?
Why did you become a person who, you know, robbed a bank?
Why did you – what went wrong?
You used to be a baby.
This is just something that I...
Being a parent really changed my perspective of human beings in a very profound way, in many, many profound ways.
But one of the biggest ones is I stopped looking at people as being static.
I stopped looking at, oh, Jeremy's 54. He's always been 54. That's how I know it.
Now I look at everybody like, oh, you were a baby.
You were a baby.
You know what I mean?
I love my daughters dearly, and they're very extraordinary people, but it's been fascinating to watch.
As little babies become these really complex human beings and have conversations with them and talk to them and see how they interface with life.
And then I meet people who are all fucked up and angry and fucking hateful.
I'm like, God damn, what happened?
What went wrong?
What are the things and how do you get out of this?
I'll keep trying and testing the limits of my body and my mind and my spirit and what I can pass on to others, what I can give on to others, what they give me.
I mean, it is a vibrant, high vibration that I'm living right now.
I'm so blessed to have it.
I have so much gratitude at every breath.
I almost feel like I don't have to walk anymore.
I just feel so lucky.
And I think it has to do with all the love and all the goodness.