Jeremy Renner: Daddy Duties Come Before Career
By Allison Takeda for US Magazine
Nothing else compares! Jeremy Renner has some pretty impressive movies on his resume -- The Town, The Hurt Locker, The Avengers, American Hustle, and The Bourne Legacy, to name a few -- but his favorite role to date is dad to daughter Ava, 2, his only child with estranged wife Sonni Pacheco.
Chatting with Ellen DeGeneres for an episode of her talk show airing Wednesday, April 15, the Avengers: Age of Ultron star 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."