Jeremy Renner reveals the one positive thing about breaking both arms on 'Tag' set

Ever since his breakthrough role as serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in 2002’s Dahmer, Jeremy Renner has carved out an impressively varied Hollywood career, starring in acclaimed works like Arrival and The Hurt Locker (for which he received one of his two Academy Award nominations), as well as action-packed blockbusters such as Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, The Bourne Legacy, and The Avengers. And while he was conspicuously absent in April’s Avengers: Infinity War, Jamie Foxx found Renner for an amusing and revealing Off Script, presented exclusively on Yahoo Entertainment.

Renner has been in the news lately thanks to the revelation that, during the filming of his upcoming comedy Tag (out June 15), he broke both his arms — an injury that was hidden by crafty CGI work in at least a few scenes. Speaking about it to Foxx, who can’t believe such a calamity happened on a comedy versus one of Renner’s rugged superhero outings, Renner admits, “It was a rig that broke, and I just broke along with it.” The one positive, he says: at least his face came out of it unscathed.

Faces are something Renner is apparently an expert at making beautiful. He explains that, for a time, he became a make-up artist. He even went so far as to work at a Lanc?me counter at the Santa Monica Mall, where two happy customers wound up putting him in touch with a big shot at Playboy, who in turn offered him a job. It was not, however, to be, as Renner confesses he turned the gig down because he thought “that’s going to take me down some bad roads.”

As he tells Foxx, it was Dahmer that helped him land the subsequent part in The Hurt Locker, although playing the notorious murderer wasn’t easy. “The film messed me up for a while,” Renner states, to the point that for a full decade, his couldn’t go into a bar alone for fear of having deviant thoughts (“I’m outta here!”).

From Renner’s debut screen-acting job to his love of music, Foxx leaves no topic untouched in his wide-ranging chat with Renner. Check out their entire interview above, and keep your eye out for more installments of Off Script.