I’ve been a little bit worried about Jeremy Renner. The promotional tour for The Avengers: Age of Ultron has started, and I’m worried that Renner is going to get a lot of questions about the situation with Sonni Pacheco, his now estranged wife (they’re not divorced yet, but they will be soon enough). After all the sketchiness that’s gone down – much of it public! – how could Renner possibly avoid those questions? Turns out, I completely underestimated the ability of friendly media outlets to whitewash the whole situation. So far, Renner hasn’t been asked about it at all. Instead, he gets to answer questions from Ellen DeGeneres about how much he loves being a dad to daughter Ava Berlin.
Chatting with Ellen DeGeneres for an episode of her talk show airing Wednesday, April 15, Jeremy Renner joked that fatherhood had essentially ruined him for everything else in life.
“It is the greatest thing in the world. I mean, it really kind of changed my perspective on a lot of things,” Renner, 44, told the comedienne, adding that his little girl is at a “great age” and “talking a lot.”
“It’s kind of screwed my career in a lot of ways,” he quipped. “Because I don’t really care about it so much ’cause I care about her so much. She’s like number one in my life. And now I get to do movies on the side. Daddy’s my best role to date, I think.” After a round of applause from the audience, he cracked, “And all I had to do was have sex. That’s amazing.”
The one drawback? Constant traveling. “I do a lot of flights back [when I’m working],” he explained. “I did like 40 flights back from London to here pretty much every other week to see her, sometimes for eight hours, and then [I] fly back.”
Fortunately, little Ava has plenty of other relatives to keep her company when Renner is away. As the actor revealed to DeGeneres, he’s the oldest of seven kids — the youngest of whom is the same age as his daughter!
“My dad had my brother the same week I had my daughter,” he shared. “So it’s kind of like my dad’s having his own grandkids…I mean, it bodes well for me, I guess. I can still, you know, make things happen later on in life.”
Yes, Renner’s dad just welcomed his seventh kid the same week Renner welcomed Ava Berlin. I get the feeling that Renner’s family is pretty much all-over-the-place, you know? Compared to the rest of his family, Renner’s relatively sane and successful. As for Renner positioning himself as a devoted father who would take 40 London-to-LA trips so he could see his daughter on the weekends? Smart. He’s positioning himself well for an extended custody battle, if it comes to that.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Oh blaaaaargh, I swear to God, if I hear an actor saying that “being a dad/mother is their best role ever” one more time, I will choke to death on my own vomit. :/
This.
As someone who is childless and fine with being childless, I’d love to see some celebrities come out to say how important that decision was for them. (Overpopulation is a thing! Some of us don’t want to contribute to the problem and hate being made to feel less of a person as a result!)
Cumberbatch and Renner have now both said the “daddy is the best role ever” sound bites…I wonder what else they have in common, hmmm?
I just hope Jeremy and his ex wife can somehow keep a lid on anymore trashing of each other in the media. That includes friends and relatives who want to talk to a tabloid.
Where do we stand on guest house residing boyfriends though?
He would be considered family 😀
I wouldn’t expect Ellen to ask JR anything that he didn’t want to talk about! Maybe, his PR team told the producers of Avengers, that JR could only do the soft interviews and leave the the more hard-hitting interviews to the rest of the cast. If I were an actor and an interviewer asked me a personal question that I didn’t want to answer, I would just say “I’m not talking about that! Ask me anything you want about the movie, but my personal life is off limits”…I don’t understand why more actors don’t do this?
Oh, and I don’t know why, but Renner always creeps me out, always!
@MrsBPitt, who wrote: “Oh, and I don’t know why, but Renner always creeps me out, always!”
You’re not alone. He ‘always’ looks like he’s preening in front of an invisible mirror to me, especially when he’s acting (“I’m scowling because this is my angry face … don’t I look pretty doing it?”). Of course, this is just my opinion … but one I’ve held for a long time.
Lol, because they want to talk about it.
It’s been one of those days and I’m in an equal opportunity hating mood today so I’m gonna say it’s just as insufferable as when men say it as when women do. Now get off my lawn.
*shakes fist*
Lol!
I like it when male actors say it–we hear so much about kids, parenthood on the female side, so I love it when men get into it too. And I think it’s fairly typical, as to what he said. Especially in an industry where you are Mr./Ms. Popular as long as your movies make money, after that no one wants to be seen with you/take your calls, you are constantly told that you have to look a certain way (though guys have it WAY easier), etc……..in that kind of an environment, you have to have something/someone to ground you. Some people it’s their kids. Others it’s their spouse. Their dog that doesn’t care that it’s 10 am, you overslept, so he peed on the floor (like my dog does)….
@VC – Absolutely fair enough. The way that I look at it (and I was in a BAD mood yesterday) is that I get really sick and tired of thinking good of people, both men and women, for doing what should be considered a good/right thing (ie wanting to put their kids first and doing so). It’s like “yay, you’re meeting a bare minimum standard of being a decent human being, yay!”
I strongly suspect that over and above the judges ruling, Sonni got a quiet under the table sum to go away. No way he would dare go through the Avengers promotion tour with such an unpredictable quantity over his head.
I, for one, am not worried about him. He has money, a PR team, Marvel on his side , and he was stupid enough to not settle this custody fast.
I haven’t found him interesting/funny in a long time. Methinks he could have stopped his comment on being a dad as his best role and not crack up a joke about all he had to do was sex. :/
Totally agree, Miss M…the “all I had to do was have sex” comment, was way too “I really am straight and did not hire anyone to carry my baby for my gay lover and myself”!
MrsBPitt, I read that way too. He is trying to shut down the gay rumors using this joke.
I commented at the time the first pictures of Renner and Sonni were published that she looks like a girl gay men thing straight men go for, and that’s why he picked her. In my opinion, it was a “How could anyone ‘ever’ think I’m gay when I have a woman who looks like she could teach a Stripper Pole a thing or two?” … and that is not a dig at Sonni at all. Some girls/women just have that ‘look,’ but it doesn’t mean they have that particular experience at all.
There’s nothing to discuss. There’s no custody battle. Everything is settled. I never expected any questions about their personal lives beyond the benign questions anyway.
They are having a blast in this PR tour. It’s been fun to watch.
Is it wrong that I keep forgetting he is Hawkeye.
I actually watched this and found him to be charming and truthful in many ways. And it happens truly where fathers and sons are welcoming children at the same time. It happened to my nephew, he had his son 3 days before his father’s second wife delivered a daughter. Some how it doesn’t seem right though.
With Renner it is always he will do this, he will that and it never turns out that way. When the baby story first broke I don’t recall a single person on gossip sites predicting he would get married and certainly those who predicted an ongoing relationship assumed it would be for the benefit of photographers, not one of the most low key relationships in Hollywood. Then when the divorce story broke everyone assumed he would meet her demands to keep her quiet, but no, he called her bluff and it was his camp that highlighted his living arrangements and the possibility of an intimate video. So I have no idea what is coming next, but making predictions or assumptions because it is ‘obvious’ just doesn’t work with Renner.
Well, we do always complain that men don’t get asked about their kids and family.
It’s not like these ‘journalists’ have a choice. The PR people lord over them and make sure that if any question gets asked that isn’t approved. The PR machine will make sure that no other star will ever be made accessible to them again. The only person that I can think of that a PR person has no power over what to ask is Howard Stern. The rest are lemmings grasping for low hanging fruit.
Jellybean, I implore you to go to every gossip website and post #10. Over and over. Call these creeps on their crap. Especially Datalounge.
OKAAAAY, got that off my chest, let me pose a riddle that has been bothering me. Remember in Sep/Oct 2013 Renner presents with Amy Adams at some awards ceremony. She is wearing a white dress and he is wearing a wedding ring. Enormous hoopla ensues. However, court docs say they married in January 2014. After he “comes out” about the marriage, he wears the same ring all the time. It is clearly the same ring and his wedding ring. My brain cannot extrapolate any scenario for this.