Jeremy Renner: ‘Gay rumours show I’m a giant movie star’

Hollywood actor Jeremy Renner has addressed longstanding rumours about his sexuality in a new interview with Playboy magazine, saying they’re a sign he’s a “giant movie star.”

The interviewer asked Renner, star of The Avengers and Mission: Impossible franchises, about a Christmas Eve bar fight he’d previously mentioned in the press – in which he fought with a man who “called me a fag because I was wearing a scarf.” Here’s what Renner had to say:

“Okay, I’ll speak to this. But as a general rule I don’t respond to questions about my personal life. I’m not going to try to prove what I am or am not. It’s silly, right? When you google yourself and the first thing that comes up is “Jeremy Renner gay,” it’s like, “Oh, now you’ve arrived. You’re now a giant movie star.” So I just had a big laugh about it. I don’t care, ultimately, if that’s what people want to think, read and care about. Fucking say whatever the hell you want about me. Look at where we’re at socially—leaps and bounds ahead of where we started. That’s an amazing thing. To suggest that it’s negative, that being gay is a terrible thing, a perversion or whatever—I just don’t get it. Don’t you wish we were in a world where we’re not shaming, judging and boxing people in?”

Renner married Canadian model Sonni Pacheco in January 2014, but Pacheco filed for divorce less than a year later, citing irreconcilable differences.