A former die-hard theater actor who made a comfortable transition to
screens both big and small in the late '90s, Jeremy Renner drew praise
and courted controversy with his portrayal of serial killer Jeffrey
Dahmer. A California native, Renner discovered his love for acting
while drifting through various majors at college. He dabbled in computer
science and criminology before taking an acting class, and soon decided
to double major in theater and psychology, the stage offering the
struggling student a healthy outlet for his sometimes bottled emotions.
After graduation, the aspiring actor moved to Los Angeles in hopes of
finding work. A starring role in the play +Search and Destroy (which he
also co-directed) earned Renner positive notice from critics, and, in
1995, he made his feature debut in the critically panned gross-out
comedy National_Lampoon's_Senior_Trip.
Numerous film and television supporting roles followed, including a
1999 guest-starring appearance as a former puritan turned menacing
vampire on the popular WB series Angel.
Three years later, and despite bearing almost no physical resemblance
to the titular character, Renner's chillingly low-key performance as a
true-life murderer and cannibal in the biopic Dahmer earned him an Independent Spirit Award Best Actor nomination. In 2003, he received more exposure in a role opposite Colin_Farrell
in the big-budget action thriller S.W.A.T. After taking the lead as an
institutionalized member of the Aryan Nation in Neo Ned, he then stepped
before the camera for Italian actress/director Asia_Argento in J.T. LeRoy's 2004 screen adaptation of his story collection -The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.
Renner scored big roles in the drama North Country and the zombie sequel
28 Weeks Later before heading up the quirky TV cop show The Unusuals,
which lasted only one season on ABC. However, his work in Kathryn
Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, as a soldier who specializes in disarming
IED's in Iraq, brought him stellar reviews and a number of industry
accolades including Best Actor nominations from The Screen Actors Guild,
the Independent Spirit Awards, and the Academy. He aslo won that very
same award from numerous critics groups.
Two years later he returned to the Oscar race for his supporting turn as
Ben Affleck's best frined in The Town. He would follow that up with a
pair of giant box office hits, co-starring opposite Tom Cruise in the
fourth Mission Impossible movie, and then taking the part of Hawkeye in
The Avengers in 2012. That same year he would take over the part of
Jason Bourne in The Bourne Legacy, and he lent his voice to the animated
film Ice Age: Continental Drift. Jason Buchanan, Rovi
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