Director Rhys Thomas praises Jeremy Renner's 'genius' performance in Hawkeye

Director Rhys Thomas has praised Jeremy Renner's "genius" performance in Hawkeye.

The Welsh director, best known for his work on NBC's Saturday Night Live, directed the 2021 Marvel miniseries Hawkeye, starring Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye.

Speaking at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival this week, Rhys praised the actor's portrayal of the character, calling it "genius".

"Jeremy frequently didn't want say much, you know," he said. "His character in the script had all this exposition. We had him saying a lot."

The director continued, "He was genius (in) that kind of knowing, 'I can, I can say that entire paragraph just like this (grunts).' And he could. Not many people can."

Rhys also admitted that he was "as surprised as anybody" when Marvel contacted him about working on the action series.

Explaining why he was interested in the job, he said he liked the fact that, unlike most Marvel lead characters, Hawkeye had no superpowers.

"You get an opportunity for a bigger budget and it's Marvel," he said. "What interested me in that show was that fans were not interested in Hawkeye because he doesn't have any superpowers. He's a real guy."

"The comic book they highlighted for me as a tonal reference was by Matt Fraction, and that was grounded in that kind of energy that this is a real guy who was in pain and (who was) beaten up," Rhys continued. "He made mistakes. It was really the story of an ordinary guy with a poor sense of self-worth."

The director added that, to him, the series didn't "feel like Marvel".

Hawkeye is the fifth television series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and also stars Hailee Steinfeld.