I'm always down to do some thrills.

I don't think I'm seeking it. [laughs]

I'm not actively getting up in the morning, cup of coffee,

"Let's go find some [beep] to jump off of."

[crew laughing]

That make sense?

I like challenges, that's for sure.

I'd definitely be more of a challenge seeker.

I love problems to overcome.

[cheerful music]

Hi, I'm Jeremy Renner and this is the timeline of my career.

For me, it's sort of dumb luck.

It was in college and took an acting class as an elective,

and that's when everything kind of shifted for me.

But once I started acting in L.A., I was like 23 or 24,

on the side was as a makeup artist.

I was a makeup artist while I was in L.A.

for a good eight years, and that was my job on the weekends

to kind of keep me afloat so I can go audition.

[cheerful music]

- Lisa.

Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa.

- What?

- Wanna cut and go to a party?

Come on. I know you like me.

- Would you leave me alone?

- Actually booking was like, you know,

winning the lottery type of feeling.

I remember jumping up and down and I called my mom

and I said, "I'm going to Toronto. I got this movie."

And I didn't know where the hell fucken Toronto was.

But I'm like, I was so excited.

I remember kissing the dirty old carpet

at the crappy apartment I was living in.

It was a big, big milestone for me to know that like, hey,

I can actually work in this city.

[cheerful music]

- I buy you these shoes,

you just gotta take a couple of pictures.

- Well, what kind of pictures?

- Just a couple of pictures of you, you know,

making a muscle, sitting in a chair,

you know, looking tough.

- That movie has a lot of value to me in my life.

This is probably around 2000.

So some good seven years have been gone by

since "Senior Trip."

I think there was like an actors strike

I believe around that time,

so I remember, you know, a lot of struggles

'cause I was doing a lot of commercials at the time

to help keep working as an actor and help pay the bills.

But I remember being very, very poor

in the sense of that I had no electricity, no running water,

and that kind of stuff happening.

My manager at the time said,

"Hey, there's this thing with Dahmer."

I'm like, "That sounds interesting."

So then I went and read this monologue for the director,

got cast that day,

and then three days later we started shooting,

and then 14 days after that moment we were done shooting.

So it happened very, very, very quickly.

It was a whirlwind of an experience

and the movie did well for me in the sense

of a lot of people within the industry

saw it and noticed it,

and how people perceived me shifted in a positive way,

as far as like creative opportunities for me in the future.

Kathryn Bigelow saw "Dahmer"

and this is the guy to play Will James

for "The Hurt Locker."

- That wasn't so bad our first time working together.

What do you think?

- Huh.

I think us working together means I talk to you

and you talk to me.

- We going on a date, Sanborn?

- No. We're going on a mission.

- Kathryn was in L.A.,

so I flew from London for a dinner to meet her in person

and she shows me a lookbook, which is just images,

and talk more about the character.

I was more just sort of like agreeing like,

"Yeah, we're gonna go do this."

After getting the role it was probably a good year,

year and a half before we started actually filming,

so I'd read other actors.

I would go to Fort Irwin and train with EOD,

which is part of just understanding the role.

And then we started our production

and went to Middle East and started filming.

As like a kid from Modesto, California,

it's strange going over to the Middle East, you know.

Everything was just different.

It's 130 degrees.

You got a 100-pound bomb suit on,

but, like, heat, it doesn't become heat anymore.

Like, pain is more of a spiritual pain

than it is like a physical sort of pain.

The location was a huge character in that film in particular

where it only informs you of truths.

You know, if we were supposed to be freezing,

it would have been awful, you know, 'cause it's 130 degrees.

But everything that we were doing,

everywhere we were, made it easier, realistic to us.

The shooting experience is one thing,

but then as it all came together,

it took about two years before it to actually be released.

So we were going around to every military base

and showing the film and talking about it,

and that's not even something on my filmography.

This is more of a life experience

that I was blessed to be a part of.

You know, it became a wonderful tool to communicate

between civilian life and soldier life.

And then the kind of the payoff with Kathryn

becoming the first woman director to win an Oscar.

I survived all the way through until,

until, yeah, one day.

We wrapped and then the boys,

we all went over to Beirut and had fun,

and then my buddy got drunk and he ordered a sandwich

to the room and I ate a sandwich for him

'cause he passed out and it had lettuce on it,

and I was done.

I lost 30 pounds in four days.

Got heli lifted back to Jordan.

I'm like, "I'm wrapped.

"I'm on my own free time,

"and I'm sicker than I've ever been sick in my life."

[laughs] Yeah, those memories.

- There's too many locks.

There's too many. I can't do it.

- Undo. - I can't get it off.

I'm sorry, okay?

You understand? I'm sorry.

- Help me.

- You hear me? I'm sorry.

I'm sorry!

- [Sanborn] Get down now!

[soldiers yelling]

[car horns honking]

- Did you say your name was Jim or Jem?

- Ah, it's J-Jem. Well, it's both, actually.

Um, teachers when we were growing up, you know,

used to always say, "Hey, you can have this one.

"He's a real gem."

So I guess it kinda stuck.

- Yeah, that was just as foreign to me

as being in the Middle East.

You know, I didn't know really much about Boston.

Ben's said like, "We're not gonna do any dialect coaches."

So he just put me with a bunch of people in a bar,

ex-cons just got out of a 20-year bit.

These are all dudes that were in prison,

all guys that did bank robberies and armored car heists

and that kind of stuff.

It couldn't be funnier and cooler and the whole thing,

but I just hung out with them for, like, two weeks.

Ben is a wonderful, super, super smart guy.

It was a great journey to work with him,

and Boston has a really, really cool, beautiful community.

I really enjoyed shooting there.

- About six foot, 180 pounds, blue eyes. Who is he?

- Crude drawing, but by your description,

that could be Kurt Hendricks.

190 IQ, served in Swedish special forces,

professor of physics.

- I was meeting with J.J. Abrams

about the movie "Super 8," I believe.

I think I was sitting in this room and he says,

"Hey, I wanna hear all your thoughts,

"but what do you think about 'Mission Impossible'?"

I'm like, "Yeah, they're great movies. I love them.

"So anyway, 'Super 8'--"

"No, hold on.

"Would you like to go meet Tom?

"'Cause they're having a whole kind of show-and-tell

"right now over at Paramount."

I'm like, "Uh, okay. Like, right now?"

He's like, "Yeah, yeah, let me call him."

So I'm driving across from Santa Monica now

all the way back into Hollywood

and I go sit in his room and talking to Tom Cruise

and all the people kind of involved in that and the director

and we start talking and they say,

"Hey, we really want you in this movie."

I'm like, "Okay, that's great."

They're saying this and talking about this,

and I'm like, "Well, all this sounds really amazing,

"you guys, but like, why me?"

And they're like, "Well, because we look at you

"and you can be a good guy or a bad guy.

"People might be on the fence.

"You're like a coiled spring."

I'm like, "Great, I understand that.

"I get why you say that."

I didn't say yes or no.

I just gave them all a hug and I went home.

And I got a phone call from Tom.

First of all, how does Tom Cruise have my home line?

[laughs] I'm like, "Hello." "Hey, it's Tom."

"Hey, what's up, man?"

And he said, "Do you wanna do it or not?"

I'm like, "Yeah, of course I'll do it.

"I'll do it. Yeah, sure." And I hung up.

So that's how I got the role.

And still, I didn't know what the script was

or the character was, and I mean how could I say no.

It was just a strange, odd thing.

I went in for one movie with J.J.

and then come home for now ultimately a trilogy

with "Mission Impossibles."

Tom taught me a lot about an actor in the stunt world

and treating it like that's a big part of the job

and how to prepare your body enough

to go through the punishment,

which got my brain thinking about stunts in a different way,

which really started a trajectory for me in the stunt world.

And I loved it 'cause I've always been athletic,

always been an athlete,

and now I got to sort of use those skills

in the acting world.

That's why the action movies are just as fun to me

as like some character-driven movie,

'cause there's lots of challenges and things to overcome

in those types of films.

In the stunts, you know, jeez,

Tom is just an absolute genius maniac.

This guy's insane.

But it inspired me to be the best I could be.

[dramatic music]

[Ethan yelling]

[dramatic music]

- Stark, got a lot of strays sniffing your tail.

[dramatic music]

- Just trying to keep them off the streets.

- Well, they can't bank worth a damn.

[dramatic music]

Find a tight corner.

- I remember going in to talk with Kevin Feige

and Lou D'Esposito

and they'd show me like the Ultimates version of Hawkeye.

"Iron Man" had come out,

and I said, "Look, man, I'm in to what you guys are doing."

'Cause I loved "Iron Man."

"I like how you made, you know, 'Iron man' plausible.

"It was so like, ah, I love that."

So that's where they wanted to go with it.

I'm like, "Great."