I’ve been a little bit worried about Jeremy Renner. The promotional tour for The Avengers: Age of Ultron has started, and I’m worried that Renner is going to get a lot of questions about the situation with Sonni Pacheco, his now estranged wife (they’re not divorced yet, but they will be soon enough). After all the sketchiness that’s gone down – much of it public! – how could Renner possibly avoid those questions? Turns out, I completely underestimated the ability of friendly media outlets to whitewash the whole situation. So far, Renner hasn’t been asked about it at all. Instead, he gets to answer questions from Ellen DeGeneres about how much he loves being a dad to daughter Ava Berlin.

Chatting with Ellen DeGeneres for an episode of her talk show airing Wednesday, April 15, Jeremy Renner joked that fatherhood had essentially ruined him for everything else in life.

“It is the greatest thing in the world. I mean, it really kind of changed my perspective on a lot of things,” Renner, 44, told the comedienne, adding that his little girl is at a “great age” and “talking a lot.”

“It’s kind of screwed my career in a lot of ways,” he quipped. “Because I don’t really care about it so much ’cause I care about her so much. She’s like number one in my life. And now I get to do movies on the side. Daddy’s my best role to date, I think.” After a round of applause from the audience, he cracked, “And all I had to do was have sex. That’s amazing.”

The one drawback? Constant traveling. “I do a lot of flights back [when I’m working],” he explained. “I did like 40 flights back from London to here pretty much every other week to see her, sometimes for eight hours, and then [I] fly back.”

Fortunately, little Ava has plenty of other relatives to keep her company when Renner is away. As the actor revealed to DeGeneres, he’s the oldest of seven kids — the youngest of whom is the same age as his daughter!

“My dad had my brother the same week I had my daughter,” he shared. “So it’s kind of like my dad’s having his own grandkids…I mean, it bodes well for me, I guess. I can still, you know, make things happen later on in life.”

[From Us Weekly]

Yes, Renner’s dad just welcomed his seventh kid the same week Renner welcomed Ava Berlin. I get the feeling that Renner’s family is pretty much all-over-the-place, you know? Compared to the rest of his family, Renner’s relatively sane and successful. As for Renner positioning himself as a devoted father who would take 40 London-to-LA trips so he could see his daughter on the weekends? Smart. He’s positioning himself well for an extended custody battle, if it comes to that.

Photos courtesy of WENN.