Marvel star Jeremy Renner is facing accusations that he sent unsolicited “intimate” photos and video to a Chinese filmmaker and threatened to “call ICE” on her after she “called him out privately” on alleged misconduct.
Filmmaker and artist Yi Zhou, director of the documentary Chronicles of Disney featuring Renner, made the allegations in a series of Instagram posts and in an in-depth interview with the Daily Mail. Zhou, 38, alleges she had a personal and professional relationship with Renner, 54, that left her fearing for her safety.
“Mr. Renner first contacted me directly in June, sending personal and intimate photographs of himself, behavior that, according to public reports, he has exhibited before,” she wrote on Instagram. She claims Renner wooed her over calls and text discussions, saying he wanted a relationship. Zhou alleges they started dating and working together on two projects, including Chronicles of Disney, and that Renner “appears in 80% of the film.” She claims that when the documentary was released last month, Renner “refused to make any public promotion,” despite allegedly having entered into written agreements with her Italian production company, Into the Sun Films. Zhou says she appealed to Renner to help her combat fan accounts falsely claiming the documentary was generated by AI without his consent, but he purportedly refused.
“When I called him out privately about his past misconduct and asked him to behave properly, to respect me as a woman and as a filmmaker, he threatened to call immigration/ICE on me, an act that deeply shocked and frightened me,” she wrote. “Such behavior is unacceptable and emblematic of the imbalance of power that continues to harm women in our industry.”
A rep for the actor called the allegations “totally inaccurate and untrue.” The Marvel actor has not commented publicly.
In her interview with the Daily Mail, Zhou claimed it was Renner who pursued her. “I did not reach out to him,” she said. “I didn’t even know his name, never watched a movie of his. He used me and denied me and denied our work.” She shared a screenshot of a pornographic image that Renner allegedly sent to her via WhatsApp in June.
She went on to claim that one night in August, Renner drank a bottle of wine and yelled at her for two hours during a work meeting at his house. Zhou claimed she had to “lock” herself in a room, “scared for [her] life.”
Renner nearly died in a snow plow accident on New Year’s Day 2023. He recounted the accident — which left him in critical condition — in a Diane Sawyer interview a few months later. “I chose to survive. That’s not gonna kill me, no way,” Renner said.
The actor previously was married to Canadian model and actress Sonni Pacheco. During a bitter child custody battle, Pacheco accused him of substance abuse and threatening to kill her.
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