Biography | Jeremy Renner — The El Capitan Premiere That Joined Him to the Avengers

On April 11, 2012, Jeremy Renner attended the world premiere of Marvel's The Avengers at the El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.

CBS News photographed Renner at the venue and also placed him with Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, and the film's assembled cast and crew.

Wired's contemporary report described the premiere as the public arrival of a team built from Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Black Widow, and Renner's Hawkeye.

For Renner, the evening joined a newly visible franchise role to the dramatic recognition that had brought him to the Academy Awards two years earlier.

Hawkeye was not presented as a solitary star vehicle, because the film's central experiment was the combination of heroes whose stories had previously occupied separate screens.

That ensemble structure made the El Capitan carpet a useful career marker: Renner was now being introduced as one part of a recurring cinematic world rather than only as the lead of an independent war drama.

CBS's photographs preserve several versions of that change, moving from his individual arrival to pairings with colleagues and finally to the full production group.

The premiere therefore records a professional expansion without pretending that one evening created the performance, the character, or the franchise by itself.

It also keeps the event distinct from later Avengers premieres, which returned Renner to the ensemble after the series had grown into a global institution.

The El Capitan mattered as more than a generic Hollywood backdrop, because Disney uses the restored movie palace for major studio premieres and the April 2012 event was held there specifically.

The map point marks the theatre building at 6838 Hollywood Boulevard, using the building coordinate recorded for El Capitan rather than an estimated red-carpet position.

No private route, backstage room, seat, hotel, or residence is represented by this location.

The accompanying photograph shows the illuminated El Capitan exterior in 2008 and is offered as architectural context, not as an image of Renner or the 2012 premiere.

Photo: Ken Lund, “El Capitan Theatre, Hollywood, California,” 16 October 2008, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.