Jeremy Renner Says He Isn't Hawkeye

A month ago, an offhand quote from The Hurt Locker lead Jeremy Renner seemed to position him as Hawkeye for Marvel's upcoming films like The Avengers, and consequently put the geek vultures into a frenzy. Now the actor says it was all for nothing, and that the role isn't his. We've heard these denials before, so the question is: do you believe him?

In November, Renner told Empire that he'd been talking about two in-character appearances with Marvel. He also said, "Hawkeye could be interesting. They're going to send me some stuff on it, see what it is." At the time the latter quote seemed like too little to really build expectations on, but the notion of the actor adding meat to what is likely to be a small role was too appealing to ignore entirely.

Now in an interview with Movieline, Renner says there's no deal.

That was just one of those things that got blown way out of proportion. It was an idea. Those Marvel guys, I'm a big fan of them. They're so smart about how they want to do these things...So they thought Hawkeye is an interesting role, and asked me if I knew anything about him. I said no, so they gave me their sort of spiel on what he was, and I thought that it was kind of interesting. The only reason it came out this early, because Avengers is two years away, is that they're thinking OK, we may throw him in Thor, we may not, as a cameo. You know what I mean? So there's truth that we talked about it, but there's no truth to me doing it.

Even when actor denials about roles turn out to be false, I'm a fan of taking people at their word. Could Renner still be Hawkeye eventually? Sure, and it would likely be great. But for now we'll assume it's as he says, and be thankful if it turns out otherwise.