  Jeremy Renner (Reuters file photo) |
Jeremy Renner's current state of mind? "Ear-to-ear-grin."
The actor has had his distinctive nose to the grindstone for 20 years, and after the success of The Hurt Locker and The Town last year, Renner experienced a profound change in his career trajectory.
He's now working all the time, and he's working in huge movies.
Known for bringing complicated, conflicted characters to life, Renner, 40, is now starring in Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol, a larger-than-life action movie that's part four of Tom Cruise's box-office juggernaut.
(The film is already playing in IMAX theatres and set for release in regular theatres on Wednesday.)
At the moment, Renner's journey is a bit like Daniel Craig's, when Craig went from respected character actor to playing James Bond.
And it all sounds like quite a trip.
"This is a ride you don't get to buy a ticket for," says Renner.
"It's an opportunity to do things in life most people don't get the chance to do. And now, it's my job. And ... I get paid for this?" He laughs.
"Don't get me wrong, it's not easy," he adds. "There are physical challenges, personal challenges. But that's what I love about it."
Renner, whose approach to stunts is, "I'll do anything," says he could barely do the stretching exercises when he started training for Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol.
"It was a steep learning curve to get to the point physically where I needed to be, to be able to do the stunts required of me ... But I like the challenges in anything in life, especially in my job. It's got to be emotionally demanding or physically challenging. I want to grow. I want to learn. I want to get better. I want to feel I'm not just doing the same thing over and over. That's the exciting part of the job."
Not doing the same thing over and over has already been a hallmark of Renner's acting career. Starting out in theatre, he made his film debut in a comedy called Senior Trip in 1995, and went on to appear in such films as Dahmer, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, North Country, 28 Weeks Later, The Assassination of Jesse James by The Coward Robert Ford, The Hurt Locker and The Town. The roles are all different -- cowboy, grifter, bomb dismantling expert, local bully, serial killer -- but the common thread is the element of the dark side.
Renner, who has been nominated for Academy Awards for his work on The Hurt Locker and The Town, is fearless on the job.
The actor grew up in a big family in Modesto, Calif. His parents, Lee Renner and Valerie Cearley, were teenagers when they married; they were divorced when Renner was about 10, although from all accounts they remain friends. Renner has often spoken about how supportive his parents were with his career decisions, even though there were many lean years for him as an actor. In the past, he kept a second job renovating houses with a close friend.
There's no time for that now. Once Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol is released, Renner will then be part of The Avengers, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and the Bourne franchise (The Bourne Legacy).
"And after that, I am supposed to do a small role in a James Gray movie with Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard, and that it's not an action movie will be a nice change of pace. There's a pimp and a whore and a magician, and I get to play the magician." He laughs again.
"That's the most crude one-liner I can give you on it. I couldn't do it justice in 10 minutes, so let me just say to work with people of this calibre, it's pretty exciting."
What changes for him, artistically speaking, with the move from small indie movies to these blockbusters?
"There's a lot of differences, obviously, between other jobs in the past compared to the massive world stage these movies are part of, but when it comes down to it, artistically, it's still the same," he responds. "You don't change how you go about telling the truth or anything else. A character is a character. A character doesn't know how much you're spending on a movie. Doesn't matter. You're still trying to tell a story."
As for changes in his own life, the actor says he's happy with the way things are unfolding. "I think back to that first movie I did, Senior Trip. It was a National Lampoon kind of goofball comedy, but what if that had been The Hangover of the '90s or something? That would have been a different scenario. I was very young," says Renner, suggesting he might not have been able to handle it all.
"I just feel really happy that things are happening now, that I'm recognized for doing something I really love to do, and parts I want to continue to play. As an actor, you just want to be able to work, to just get a job, and to be received by an audience."
COMPLETED MISSIONS:
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (1996)
Director: Brian De Palma
Tom Cruise stars as Ethan Hunt, a guy who has to clear his name after the death of his colleagues. Who can he trust? Not the screenwriter, that's for sure.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II (2000)
Director: John Woo
This sequel, which concerns a world-menacing virus and the bad guys who control it, was somewhat more exciting than the original. Cruise shared the action with Thandie Newton (and Ving Rhames, Brendan Gleeson and Rade Sherbedgia) ... but in the end, who could be trusted?
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III (2006)
Director: J.J. Abrams (in his feature debut)
Ethan Hunt is supposed to be retired. Instead, he's lured back into the world of espionage to go after an evil villain and black market dealer (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a man so wicked he even kidnaps Ethan's girlfriend! (Michelle Monaghan). Anyway, Ethan Hunt is on the run both from the bad guys and from people inside IMF, because it looks as if there's a mole. Oh, this spying career! You just never know who the heck you can trust!
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -- GHOST PROTOCOL (2011)
Director: Brad Bird
First reports say the action sequences are gob-smacking. The IMF is implicated in a bombing at the Kremlin, and so the agency is shut down; Ethan Hunt and his colleagues must clear their names, capture an international villain and hang off the tallest building in the world. And we have this sneaking suspicion that not everybody in the story can be trusted.
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