Jeremy Renner reveals cast of genuine bank robbers for The Town

Jeremy Renner has revealed how the cast for Ben Affleck’s new heist movie The Town consisted primarily of past bank robbers and active criminals, with only a core nucleus of professional actors on set.

Authenticity seemed high on the agenda for Affleck and Co as Renner said: “There’s the main cast, then everyone else in it was a bank robber, or currently is a bank robber. They couldn’t tell you for obvious reasons. We wanted the action to be as close to the real thing as possible.”

Renner said he was not intimidated in the company of these criminals saying: “They’re not murderers. I mean some are, but these guys were just going in to get some money.”

“Their whole attitude was like, “That’s our money in there, let’s go get it!”, but they have a real kind of jovial thing about them.”

In one brief encounter, Renner chatted with a man who had a bullet lodged in his brain after a botched robbery attempt and he said: “That guy was pretty intense. But I wasn’t afraid by any means… he was a really, really sweet dude. But you wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley either.”

The 39 year old actor has endured years in the shadows and was only catapulted into the public eye fairly recently after his stellar performance as a bomb disposal expert in The Hurt Locker. Renner is certainly appreciative of his newly acquired status as a Hollywood A-lister saying:

“I’ve really noticed a change with being recognised, which is lovely- and of course, the amount of scripts I get sent has increased. That’s kind of how I judge how it is all going.”

The Town is arguably one of the prestige films of the year with a cast that includes Rebecca Hall, Blake Lively and Mad Men’s Jon Hamm.

Check out the trailer here.