Jeremy Renner has long made clear the wasn't thrilled with playing a mind-controlled Hawkeye for much of "Marvel's The Avengers," but he's never revealed the lengths he was willing to go to free himself from the 2012 blockbuster.

"I was just getting to know who Hawkeye was, and then zap, I go round like a zombie, I'm like Loki's minion," the actor said during a Q&A over the weekend at the London Film & Comic Con. "And I'm still not even sure who Hawkeye was at that point. So I'm a little frustrated, because I was so excited to figure out who Hawkeye was."

So what did he do? The Oscar nominee gave filmmaker repeated opportunities to kill off the character.

"I just had a heart attack in every scene - I'd just be walking with... Scarlett Johansson, and just like be ugh," Renner said, clutching his chest. "And they said, 'What are you doing man?' "I'm giving you an option, if you just want to kick me out of this movie. Just you know, at any given moment, if you wanna kill me off, daddy's gonna be having a heart attack."

Renner spoke more seriously about his displeasure with Hawkeye's depiction in 2012, telling the Los Angeles Times, "At the end of the day, 90 percent of the movie, I'm not the character I signed on to play. I'm literally in there for two minutes, and then all of a sudden ... All I could really work on was the physical part of it all, because that didn't change."

The actor has of course changed his mind since then, reprising his role as Hawkeye in 2015's "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and this year's "Captain America: Civil War."

"I don't really want him to die now," he said. "I really got to explore him a lot, and I can't wait to explore him more, and there's some really cool ideas coming up."

Which is probably a good thing considering that "Avengers: Infinity War" will arrive in theaters in 2018.