As a teenager Renoir worked in a few of his father's films, including House Party (1936), as assistant cameraman on The Human Beast (1938) and The Rules of the Game (1939).
In 1942 he joined his father in the United States, enlisted in the American Army and served in combat in the Pacific.
[1] Renoir became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he founded the Department of Comparative Literature in 1966.
[2] He was considered a leading scholar of medieval English literature and published books on Beowulf and John Lydgate and was honored with a festschrift in 1992 for his scholarly activities.
[3] After retiring, Renoir spent his last years running a small sustainable farm in north central California, doing much of the work himself.