Jeremy Renner & the IT Factor

The Oscars are Sunday night and there's one narrative that seems to be missing from the discussion. I *think* this may be the first time a former reality-TV star has been nominated for an Oscar...

I was watching some puff-piece 20/20 special on ABC earlier in the week. The theme was "Before They Were Stars...!" Basically a way to piece together an hour of programming out of old tv and movie clips, with the occasional bit of "rare home video footage".

They got up to Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner and I was expecting them to show some footage from "The IT Factor"—a reality show that ran on Bravo a number of years ago, following aspiring actors' different paths on the bumpy road toward making it. (Or more likely, NOT making it.) First time I saw Jeremy Renner was on that show. And every time I'd see him in anything else, I'd think, "Hey, it's that guy from that struggling actor show...!"

But no. Not a mention of "the IT Factor" on the 20/20 program.

In fact, couldn't find any clips of the show on YOU TUBE.

Nor could I find any recent interviews with Renner where he's asked about his participation in the show. Only thing I could find was this interview from April 2009 where he's plugging his new tv show "The Unusuals"—long before there was Oscar buzz for Hurt Locker.

The excerpt:

“I learned a lot about myself [through The IT Factor]. I was pretty private and exposing myself to whoever watched it was kind of hard for me, so it was a good lesson to learn...

“I initially did it because I had this little movie, Dahmer, that I thought maybe [was] going to finish getting made. It was shot for [a few hundred thousand dollars] on credit cards, so I didn’t think this thing was ever going to see the light of day. So, I said, 'Hey, let’s just do this cool show—this documentary series—and maybe I can help promote it on there. It ended up going like wildfire and I didn’t have to do anything. It was a wonderful Cinderella story of a guy living on pennies a month, no power, and all of a sudden, by the end of the show, six months later, doing [the film] S.W.A.T....

"... It didn’t make me get a job more easily. They weren’t calling me saying, ‘Hey, we have to have you in this because you were on The IT Factor.’”

I'm sure it's not his fondest credit but I find it curious that it's not being talked about more. There's this mention on Crushable and another mention here, but otherwise it doesn't seem like a lot of people are writing about it.

Check out this article from 2003 documenting Renner's earlier days as a struggling actor.

For the record, Renner was on season 2 of The IT Factor in 2003.

The only other breakout star from that show was season 1's Godfrey, who you may remember from 7up commercials and VH1 "I Love [Nostalgia]!" specials.