Actor Jeremy Renner, who plays the archer “Hawkeye” in next summer’s “The Avengers” sat down for an interview recently with an Australian newspaper to talk about his career and his star turn in director Joss Whedon’s superhero team flick. He stars this month opposite Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.”

Among the highlights:

Q: Can you get a bit lost on a big blockbuster?
A:” It certainly had that feeling on The Avengers. Maybe I’m in the movie, maybe I’m not, I have no idea. The scale is out of this world. That’s where I felt like a token, a little pawn chess piece.”

Q: How did you measure up to Cruise in the action stakes?
A: “I’ve said it a few times, but I really believe it: Tom Cruise has 48 hours in a day, when we have 24. He may sleep … every once in a while. Literally, he’ll be up two hours before work, training, then put on the producer hat and make sure everyone’s happy, then go home and be a dad for a minute, then he watches movies! How in the world? I went home and I passed out!”

Q: Did you see this action hero niche coming your way?
A: No. It started off with wanting to do something on a world stage – The Avengers. I love what Marvel do in that universe, so I thought, ‘I could give that a go, why not?’ I’ve never been a part of a movie people are gonna go see all around the world. I’ve done a lot of movies nobody’s ever seen (laughs). So that opened it up – then Mission came around, then Hansel and Gretel, then Bourne. It all snowballed in a wonderful way.

Read the full story here.