Jeremy Renner does not look like a movie star.
He has unruly hair, a nose that looks like it might have taken a punch, and the physical comportment of someone who doesn't think he needs a bodyguard.
He doesn't think like a movie star, either.
On an early weekday recently, having already done a breakfast television show and scheduled to face the loquacious Charlie Rose the same afternoon, Renner seemed puzzled by the politics of the interview process.
"I had this guy this morning who was very thoughtful and informed and kept talking, as if maybe he was waiting for me to say something. I'm not sure if he wanted me to jump in or not. I like to let someone finish his thought. So I don't know."
He'll probably have to get over it: The Bourne Legacy - which stars Renner, not as Jason Bourne but as another agent entirely - is going to be Renner's movie-star movie.
Even though the actor has appeared in some of the biggest films of the past year or so - including The Avengers and Thor (as Hawkeye) and alongside Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol - the innovative Bourne Legacy is all about Renner.
"I guess I'm the face, or one of the faces, of the franchise now," the actor said, "and not in among a big ensemble. But I don't look at it that way. I just look at it as a great role and a great opportunity."
According to director Tony Gilroy, The Bourne Legacy is unlike anything tried before. Rather than following the chronology of The Bourne Ultimatum - the last Bourne film to star Matt Damon as Robert Ludlum's rogue CIA agent - the new film takes place at the same time as its 2007 predecessor, "and not because we are so smart or so cool," Gilroy said.
"No one has ever had an opportunity to do that before. If you think about it, episodic film-making has not been something that people have really done."
Renner's character, Aaron Cross, is a superagent participating in a top-secret government medical programme that's killed off - along with its participants - after the revelations of The Bourne Ultimatum. Because he needs the drugs that the Government has had him taking, Cross has to first rescue, then collaborate with, research scientist Marta Shearling (Rachel Weisz) so they can both escape the lethal dismantling of their programme.
"I think it was really clever how Tony came up with a way to keep the franchise going," Renner said.
"It went from real concern [about how do you do this] to real excitement. It's really, really clever and smart and now it can lead to many paths."
Like a sequel.
"Yeah," Renner said.
"Which is great. I love that."
Renner, who has played Jeffrey Dahmer (Dahmer), a neo-Nazi skinhead (Neo Ned) and is Hansel in the upcoming Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, received a best actor Oscar nomination for The Hurt Locker (2008) and a best supporting actor Oscar nod for The Town (2010).
The action sequences in The Bourne Legacy - which recall the original Doug Liman film more than they do the two Paul Greengrass-directed sequels - seem likely to satisfy Bourne-aholics.
"With all the three prior films, all that work put into them, and what's put into Bourne Legacy, it would be a complete disservice if I could not perform," he says. "Especially the stunts. It's not something you can fix in CGI, it's not something you can really enhance in any way. You can maybe increase the shutter speed and make it look faster, but you can tell when that happens.
"I don't want to become some kung-fu guy," he added, smiling.
"But I have to be able to take out a target fast, efficiently and then move on."
He plans to move on from the kind of blockbuster he's been doing, at least for a while.
"I've done four pretty big films right in a row and they happen to be action movies, so I'm trying not to do another action movie for obvious reasons. It would be my own fault if I got pigeonholed".
