Jeremy Renner is doing the publicity rounds for The Bourne Legacy, so he stopped by “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” last night to shill the goods. In doing so, he told an anecdote about how he recently had to deal with an uncomfortable situation on an airplane, and the story reminded me a lot of how Alan Cumming once gave a travel tip (“I always think the pressure on planes gives you a hard-on“) and advocated the practice of always putting one’s tray down before taking a nap during flight. Well in Renner’s case, he wasn’t sleeping on his flight, but other things were definitely taking off because — get this — he had accidentally taken a Viagra pill while thinking it was an Ambien. Poor guy:

Rise and shine, Jeremy Renner!

During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! July 24, The Bourne Legacy actor, 41, regaled the audience with an unforgettable tale about his recent travel troubles.

“A lot of times when I’m on the plane, I have to sleep. And I’m not a good sleeper on the plane,” the single star admitted. “I had to fly from London to Los Angeles for dinner, and then get right back on a plane to London. That’s 10 to 12 hours. I had to get off the plane go to work, so I had to sleep on the plane.”

To help him rest, “somebody gave me some pills, like Ambien. So I took a little sleeping pill, popped it and realized nothing’s happening — but something else was happening!” Renner recalled. “I realized very quickly that the ‘A’ was actually a little ‘V’ on the pill. Not only did I not sleep the entire flight, but there was. . . ‘camping’ . . . happening!”

“Somebody gave you a Viagra instead of Ambien?” host Jimmy Kimmel, 44, asked in disbelief. “First of all, you need a new doctor or new friends.”

Renner admitted that he “was really embarrassed” by the incident, but luckily, most of the other passengers “were sleeping.”

“The flight attendants were sort of in on the joke,” Renner added. “They were like, ‘Can we get you anything, Mr. Renner?’ ‘Yeah, funny,'” he told them. “‘Ice! Ice!'”

[From Us Weekly]

Here’s a video clip of Renner’s Kimmel appearance — the make-up artist for the show got a little overzealous with the purple eyeshadow. So much for the manliness factor of not recognizing Viagra, right?

CB, Kaiser, and I were talking about this, and the general conclusion is that Renner must have never laid eyes upon Viagra before this incident because (upon a quick Googling) it’s fairly evident that Viagra are blue and diamond shaped and look very distinctive. So the obvious implication here is that Renner is naturally manly and doesn’t need your silly stamina pill, now go see his movie! Also, he appears very comfortable telling this story to Kimmel and probably had planned ahead of time to tell the tale, but he seems to indicate that he regularly takes Ambien to sleep on flights too, right? If so, wouldn’t he have realized that he was taking the wrong pill? Maybe I’m reading too much into this. It’s just a funny story, and I like thinking of Renner with an uncontrollable … never mind.

Photos courtesy of WENN