tom cruise stunt work

Tom Cruise's 10 best stunts of all time, ranked

• Tom Cruise does his own stunts and it's remarkable what he's been able to pull off.
• Hanging on the side of a plane, skydiving, climbing the world's tallest building — he's done it all.
• Here's a recap of his greatest stunts.

10. For the cargo-plane crash in "The Mummy," Cruise did the stunt inside a NASA plane that trains astronauts for zero gravity.

In 2017's "The Mummy," Cruise finds himself stuck in a cargo plane as it crashes. To pull off a scene like this, actors would typically film it in a controlled setting like a sound stage surrounded by a green screen.

Not Cruise, though.

The star shot the scene in a plane that NASA uses to train astronauts .

The scene was filmed in the plane which had to go up to 25,000 feet to get the look that Cruise was in zero gravity. The plane then did a free fall for 22 seconds.

Cruise did the flight four times to pull off the scene.

9. Cruise flew a helicopter in "Mission: Impossible — Fallout."

For the thrilling helicopter-chase scene in the finale of "Fallout," Cruise spent 16 hours a day training to get to the required 2,000 hours to fly a helicopter on his own.

But Cruise didn't just fly the helicopter. He also pulled off a 360-degree corkscrew dive in it, which would challenge even the most veteran pilot.

8. Cruise is really in a F/A-18 jet for the flight scenes in "Top Gun" Maverick" and had to deal with the G-forces.

When you see Cruise and the cast looking like they are battling G-forces in the jets, complete with distorted faces, it's because they really were.

Cruise and the cast went through training so their dogfight scenes could look as realistic as possible — which meant sitting in the F/A-18 jets as they were spun around and took dramatic dives.

7. Cruise climbed a 2,000-foot cliff in "Mission: Impossible 2."

In the opening scene of 2000's "M: I 2," Cruise is seen climbing a cliff. And yes, that's really him.

Cruise scaled the cliff in Utah with nothing but a safety rope . He also did a 15-foot jump from one cliff to another.

6. Cruise held his breath for six minutes for an underwater stunt in "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation."

In one scene, Cruise's Ethan Hunt has to dive into an underwater safe to retrieve the computer chip that will lead him closer to the villain.

Along with having to hold his breath the whole time , he must keep away from a large crane that's circling around the safe.

For the scene, Cruise first jumped off a 120-foot ledge. Then, in a 20-foot deep-water tank, Cruise held his breath for six minutes.

5. Cruise broke his ankle jumping between buildings while making "Mission: Impossible — Fallout."

Tom Cruise loves to run in his movies; it's become his trademark. But his ability to continue running came into question after a stunt went wrong on the set of "Fallout."

While jumping from one one building to another, Cruise hit the wall of the building the wrong way and broke his ankle.

The accident halted production for months and doctors told Cruise his running days might be over. But, six weeks later, Cruise was back on set doing sprints .

4. Cruise climbed the tallest building in the world for "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol."

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest building in the world, and Cruise climbed it.

For "Ghost Protocol," the actor's climb got him up to 1,700 feet in the air .

He also fell four stories down by rappelling on the surface of the building.

3. Cruise did 500 skydives and over 13,000 motocross jumps for the thrilling motorcycle stunt in "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part 1."

For the latest "M:I" movie, Cruise once again pushed himself.

And one stunt in particular is definitely up there as one of his craziest ideas yet: driving a motorcycle off a cliff.

The star did 500 skydives and over 13,000 motocross jumps to prepare for the stunt. And that wasn't just so Cruise had the skill and comfort to pull off the stunt; the training also made it possible for director Christopher McQuarrie and his crew to map out camera angles to capture it. 

The stunt was then done on the first day of principal photography.

"We know either we will continue with the film or we're not. Let's know day one!" Cruise told "Entertainment Tonight" on why it was done on the first day.

Cruise ended up doing the stunt six times on the day of shooting.

2. Cruise hung on the side of a plane as it took off for "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation."

Cruise clung to the side of a massive Airbus A400M plane as it took off and went up to 1,000 feet dealing with speeds of 100 knots.

To protect the actor, he was secured with a wire attached to the plane. He also had special contacts on to protect his eyes from debris.

Cruise did this stunt eight times.

1. Cruise did 106 skydives with a broken ankle to pull off the HALO jump in "Mission: Impossible — Fallout."

While Cruise was healing the broken ankle he sustained earlier in the "Fallout" production, he went and pulled off the most amazing stunt he's done in his career so far.

In the movie, Cruise's character and CIA tagalong August Walker (Henry Cavill) decide to do a HALO jump — a high-altitude, low-open skydive, in which you open your parachute at a low altitude after free-falling for a period of time — out of a giant C-17 plane to get into Paris undetected.

Cruise did this for real by executing the jump 106 times over two weeks , many of them done during golden hour, a very brief period of perfect lighting that occurs just before sunset.

• Main content

Watch Tom Cruise Rehearse and Perform the 'Biggest Stunt in Cinema History'

Here's how the movie star prepared for his most ambitious action sequence yet in 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning.'

A mini-documentary released on YouTube by Paramount Pictures follows the months of preparation that went into planning and executing a heart-stopping chase scene in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One , in which Cruise's character, secret agent Ethan Hunt, rides a motorcycle off the edge of a cliff and goes into a base jump, free-falling towards the earth before pulling his parachute cord.

"There's a lot going into this stunt," says director Christopher McQuarrie. "So Tom put together this master plan to coordinate all of these experts in each of the particular disciplines involved, to make this whole thing happen.

Prior to the shoot in Hellesylt, Norway in 2020, Cruise undertook a year of training to master motocross, base jumping and advanced skydiving, including working on his strength and stability to ensure he can control his own position mid-air, and manoeuver the parachute canopy in the right way.

"You train and drill every little aspect over and over and over and over again," says Cruise.

When the prep for the shoot was at its most intense, Cruise was doing 30 jumps per day, and he racked up more than 500 skydives and 13,000 motocross jumps over the course of rehearsal. Throughout this entire process, Cruise also wore a GPS chip so that they were able to track his speed and location in three-dimensional space at every stage of the stunt, which then enabled them to plan exactly where the drone cameras needed to be for the shoot.

"The key is me hitting certain speeds and being consistent with that," says Cruise. "There's no speedometer, so I do it by sound and feel of the bike. And then as I depart the bike, I'm using the wind that's hitting me, I'm pumping my chest, that will give me lift."

On the day of the shoot, all conditions have to be perfect for Cruise to pull off the staggering feat, and things are tense behind the camera as the actor shoots off the edge of the precipice and plummets into the valley below... a total of six times.

"We've been working on this for years," says Cruise. "I've wanted to do it since I was a little kid."

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‘He has an iron stomach’: Meet the man who put Tom Cruise in the sky for Top Gun 2

One man had the unenviable task of helping tom cruise defy gravity in this summer’s biggest blockbuster. he tells tom murray about stunt work, sick bags and getting so close to a fighter jet that you could feel the heat of its engines, article bookmarked.

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T om Cruise is carving through a canyon at 450 miles per hour. He rears up his F-18 fighter jet, all eight Gs visible in the lines of his face, before inverting the aircraft and diving. This is just one of the exhilarating action sequences that have made Top Gun: Maverick one of the most lauded films of the year. Fans and critics alike have sung its praises, and since its release a week ago, it’s so far grossed an estimated $176m (£140m) in North America alone. It also had Cruise’s biggest opening weekend as a movie star – a maddening statistic considering his storied career.

Most importantly, though, it’s shown the continued strength of Cruise himself. While other stars turn to superhero franchises for big box office returns, here’s one man able to carry the weight of an entire blockbuster solely on his shoulders.

Cruise repeatedly touches the sky in the film, but who actually put him there? That job fell to Kevin LaRosa Jr, Top Gun: Maverick’ s aerial coordinator and lead camera pilot. FaceTiming from his house near an airfield just north of Los Angeles, he detailed how the film pulled off its gravity-defying stunts – little of which used CGI – and what it was like being responsible for one of the most famous men on the planet. And a man who – just to add a bit more pressure to LaRosa’s job – insists on doing his own stunts.

No stunt double required

Cruise is known for being a physical actor, preferring to jump off buildings himself rather than have someone else do it for him. He famously broke his ankle while jumping from one building to another in Mission: Impossible – Fallout , after which he got up and finished the scene. While hanging onto the side of an Airbus A400 plane in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation , Cruise was hit in the chest by a rock. He’d remark it “felt like a bullet”. “If a larger rock hit him in the chest, or smaller debris hit him in the face, then the show’s over,” director Christopher McQuarrie told New York Daily News in 2015.

• Superhero? Saviour? Kook? Why we’ll never know the real Tom Cruise
• Top Gun: Maverick review – Tom Cruise soars in a sequel that’s as thrilling as blockbusters get
• Top Gun: Maverick – Why Tom Cruise’s latest thrill ride is a take-off of traditional Hollywood flying movies

It’s this kind of devotion to his craft that’s helped Cruise become an industry legend. However, with Cruise busy barrel-rolling through the sky in a fighter jet, LaRosa admits to sometimes wishing that Hollywood’s biggest star didn’t quite have to do all the work himself. “We all think that way, right? Tom absolutely does things on this movie where I’m sitting there going, ‘Oh boy, that was crazy’.”

A pilot with pedigree

LaRosa is a second-generation stunt pilot and a third-generation pilot, with a CV that includes the likes of Iron Man, The Avengers and Transformers . His father had even worked with Cruise before on Mission: Impossible III.

When he was initially offered the job on Maverick , LaRosa let out a yell so loud that he scared his own family. Initially brought on as just the camera pilot, LaRosa impressed producers so much that they promoted him to coordinator, which involved briefing the cast and crew before and after each flight. LaRosa led hours of briefings with the Navy before and after every stunt was performed. “Everything in aviation has inherent risk,” he says. “But those risks are negated with excellent briefings, risk-mitigation plans and rehearsals. We call it excellence in repetition.”

The pressure of a sequel

From the off, Cruise made it clear to the Maverick team that they were at a “disadvantage”. The original Top Gun transformed Cruise into the superstar he is today. Despite mixed critical reception, the film made over $350m (£279m) at the global box office off a $15m (£11m) budget, and, thanks in part to an inescapable soundtrack, became as synonymous with the Eighties as shell suits. “When you want to make a sequel to a movie such as Top Gun , you’re going to have all the critics, all the eyes, all the attention on you,” LaRosa says.

Basically, they needed to hit a home run, and Cruise gave a number of speeches on set to invigorate the crew. According to LaRosa, Cruise told them: “We’re making a sequel to a very historic and iconic movie and we need to obtain a level of perfection with Top Gun: Maverick that has not been seen in the cinematic world before.” LaRosa pauses – “Those are big words!” he says with a laugh.

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The training programme

LaRosa also helped Cruise put together the rigorous, three-month flight training programme for the rest of the cast, which included being rotated underwater in an ejection seat to prepare for emergencies. “Aside from training them to be pilots, they needed to check the boxes to be able to fly in the navy aircraft and go and do the same training that those naval aviators do,” LaRosa says. Ultimately, they needed to know how to survive in the event of an emergency taking place on a fighter jet.

As for being rolled around underwater: “It’s not something you look forward to doing.” However, LaRosa added that actor Monica Barbaro (Phoenix), who previously said her training as a ballerina gave her a “high pain tolerance”, impressed the most during training. “Monica just did incredible, [she was]really good with G-forces.”

Close enough to feel the afterburners

“It looks like you’re right there because we are literally right there,” LaRosa says. Filming in the sky, he’s the one in the camera jet, lining up the shot just “10 to 15 feet” behind the F-18s flown by Navy pilots. That means being close enough to “feel the heat from the afterburners”, or the burning fuel that comes out the back of a jet engine.

Anyone who’s seen the movie will know that the stunts are breathtaking to watch. In one memorable scene, the Top Gun pilots must perform a death-defying slalom through a canyon at tree-scraping altitude to avoid detection by the enemy. The low-level flying, LaRosa recalls, was as real as it looks in the movie – in fact, it felt even hairier from the cockpit. “I think that it’s difficult to tell just how low and fast we’re going,” La Rosa says, who adds that the pilots had “a target number of 100 feet above the trees and rocks”. “When you’re doing three, four or 500 knots through canyons, that’s up there.” He added that some Navy pilots were able to drop below that floor of 100 feet.

Unlike Marvel movies, Maverick didn’t rely on the use of CGI for its aerial stunts: “Everything was actually shooting a real aircraft.”

Pass the sick bag

Due to the extreme G-forces the cast were subjected to, there was a lot of vomiting involved in filming, but LaRosa noted that actor Glen Powell (Hangman) had a knack for “handling his business” with the sick bag and carrying on. “Most people when they get air sick, you’re kind of done. You’re out for the count,” LaRosa says.

“Glen would be in the back seat of an F-18, dogfighting and would feel it. He would take care of his business and then he’d be like, ‘Ok, let’s go!’ and he’d be right back. That’s a whole skill set, I don’t even know how you get there.”

The Cruise effect

Of course, Cruise has an “iron stomach”. “He’s in better shape than I am, mentally and physically,” LaRosa, who looks like he’s in his thirties laughs about Cruise, 59. “He’s just sharp and focused and it really makes you want to get on your A-game.”

LaRosa, who receives – like apparently everyone Cruise works with – a Christmas cake from the star every year, used the word “perfection” four times in the space of around 10 minutes while discussing Cruise’s work attitude. It’s all part of the Cruise lexicon, which has been forged by decades of anecdotes about the star’s intensity.

“Working with Tom, the best way I can put it is...” LaRosa pauses, perhaps wondering if what he’s about to say sounds a bit too much like a Cruise in-joke. “If there’s something impossible, if there’s something that can’t be done, he’s the guy who’s gonna figure out how we’re going to be able to do it. And there’s nobody better for that.”

‘Top Gun: Maverick’ is in cinemas now

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Mission: Impossible: Expert behind award-winning stunt speaks out

• Published 9 March

A skydiving expert who was behind one of the biggest stunts in cinema history has spoken of the experience.

Karen Saunders, of Skydive Langar, in Nottinghamshire, worked on the stunt in the seventh Mission: Impossible film.

The scene saw Cruise - Impossible Mission Force (IMF) agent Ethan Hunt - speed off a cliff on a motorcycle and parachute down to a valley below.

The stunt won "outstanding performance by a stunt ensemble" at the annual screen actors guild awards.

With over 10 years of experience working full-time as a skydiving rigger examiner, Ms Saunders was selected as Cruise's personal equipment monitor for Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023).

The award-winning motorbike and parachute scene was in Dead Reckoning Part One - the seventh film in the franchise.

Ms Saunders said: "The work that went into the motorbike shot was incredible. We were all very nervous and, the moment he launched, everyone went quiet until the parachute opened.

"You don't want to be known as the person that killed a major A-list star!"

Filming for Dead Reckoning Part One took place in Norway and the Lake District.

The stunt team and Cruise did two months of preparation in the UK before they filmed the stunt in Norway.

"He did about 30 jumps a day out of the helicopter in preparation," said Ms Saunders.

She was not going to Norway to help film the stunt - but she said Cruise wanted her there - so he flew the stunt team out on his private jet.

Ms Saunders, of Newton, in Nottinghamshire, described Cruise as being "lovely, very dedicated, very focused and kind".

"I've always been a fan of him and the films so we had some good fun."

Cruise appeared to have been pictured in Derbyshire on Monday, fuelling excitement about another Mission: Impossible film.

He was apparently snapped driving a Jeep in an apparent stunt scene at Middleton Mine.

Mission: Impossible 8 is due to be released on 23 May, 2025, according to Paramount Pictures.

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Tom Cruise’s Most Dangerous Stunts in ‘Mission: Impossible’

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By Ben Kenigsberg

• July 30, 2018

The older Tom Cruise gets, the more fun it is to watch him risk death in elaborate age- and gravity-defying ways.

One person who has seen him face danger up close is Christopher McQuarrie, who directed the now-56-year-old actor in the two most recent “Mission: Impossible” movies: “ Fallout ,” currently in theaters, and “ Rogue Nation ” from 2015. I asked him to rank the most difficult stunts he and his star, who is known to dislike doubles, have executed.

Mr. McQuarrie ranked them in order of what he called “inherent danger,” basically risk multiplied by the amount of time Mr. Cruise was exposed to that risk. But you could rank these sequences “five different ways in terms of their technical difficulty, their strain on the body, the real-time danger and difficulty,” he added. “If you arranged them alphabetically, they would be correct.”

Here are edited excerpts from our conversation:

5. Underwater Sequence, ‘Rogue Nation’

Without the benefit of oxygen, Mr. Cruise swaps a file in an underwater security system.

Given just 10 days to shoot this sequence, Mr. McQuarrie figured that his best use of the time would be to film it in a series of continuous takes. “It put a huge burden on Tom because Tom had to hold his breath longer,” the director said. “You and I can hold our breath for a minute, maybe two minutes. The minute you start exerting yourself, you consume oxygen at a much higher rate. Which meant that for Tom to be able to hold his breath for anywhere from a minute to two and a half minutes that each take required, he had to learn how to hold his breath for longer,” because he would be swimming.

Mr. Cruise and his co-star Rebecca Ferguson “trained with an extreme diver,” Mr. McQuarrie said. “He learned how to hold his breath for six and a half minutes. By the time that sequence was over, Tom was so physically and mentally exhausted, he had nitrogen in his blood, he was achy all over, he was very punchy, it was hard for him to focus and remember lines. He was exhausted all the time. It took a really severe physical toll on him.”

4. Paris Motorcycle Chase, ‘Fallout’

Having been separated from his co-star Henry Cavill, Mr. Cruise evades capture on two wheels.

“The initial idea was he would do a portion of the sequence free riding and the rest of it on these safety rigs, and when the rigs didn’t work, we just went for it. Everything that you’re seeing Tom doing, he’s doing free riding on cold cobblestones. Sometimes there was rain; sometimes there was morning dew. There was always a danger of skidding and wiping out.

“Sometimes he’s going in excess of 100 miles an hour with cars chasing him and coming at him. They were all stunt drivers, but some of them were local, so there was a language barrier. A couple of times there were miscommunications and drivers were not where they were supposed to be, which was always scary. Tom had to be hypervigilant.”

“And of course, every time he’s doing stunts like this, he’s got to act. You’re designing the camera moves so you can show that it isn’t a stunt man. One of the dangers becomes the camera itself. Tom is driving into close-up in certain shots. He’s inches away from the camera. If the camera vehicle stops short, Tom is going right into the camera headfirst.”

3. Sky-Diving, ‘Fallout’

Anatomy of a scene | ‘mission: impossible — fallout’, the director christopher mcquarrie narrates a scene where tom cruise leaps from an airplane at 25,000 feet..

“My name is Christopher McQuarrie. I am the writer, director, and co-producer of ‘Mission: Impossible - Fallout.’ The biggest challenge of this sequence is constantly maintaining a connection with Tom Cruise, knowing that Tom Cruise is going to jump out of a plane at 25,000 feet, and that the camera is going to stay with him. When Tom and I discussed this idea, right away the challenge became making it the most subjective sequence we possibly could, putting the audience with the character of Ethan Hunt. And that means that everything that Tom does, as he’s jumping out of his plane, the camera operator has to do with him in reverse. So of course, this shot right here, once this starts, we were determined to have no cuts from this moment until Tom reaches the ground. Just prior to this clip starting, he’d had a conflict with Henry Cavill, and Henry Cavill has disconnected his air hose as a way of getting Ethan Hunt out of his way, so he can jump out of the plane. So Craig O’Brien, our camera operator, is jumping backwards out of the plane, and Tom has to come towards him and come within three feet of the camera to remain in focus. Which means Tom has to stop himself, and he has a three inch margin of error because of the light at that time of day. It’s very difficult to maintain focus, and we had exactly three minutes of light everyday to gather these shots, and if you didn’t get the shot, it meant you came back the next day.” “What’s the matter, Hunt, afraid of a little lightning?” “The decision here to have all of the sound drop out was a practical decision to maintain that subjective reality, put you in Tom’s experience, and Tom is now coordinating all of his movements with Craig O’Brien. They’re actually doing a dance, so that we can maintain all of the storytelling without ever cutting, and so you’ll notice that the other actor is falling in the background there. His movements had to be coordinated with Tom, and then of course, the real danger in the sequence was a mid-air impact in which everyone could have collided — Tom, the camera operator, and the actor.” “Walker!”

Mr. Cruise, Mr. Cavill’s stunt double and a sky-diving videographer jump out a plane over the United Arab Emirates, standing in for Paris. The sequence stitched together three shots, combining jumps from 18,000 to 25,000 feet, for the appearance of a continuous take.

“Probably the most technically difficult one we’ve ever done. The costume that he’s wearing — all of that stuff is designed so that you can see that Tom is doing all of the stunt work. That helmet didn’t exist, the air tanks didn’t exist. It all has to be certified as a lifesaving device. It’s not just a prop. Layer No. 2, we need to find a country that would let us do it. And then of course, Tom has to get certified to be able to jump at that altitude.

“The jump is divided into three pieces. The first piece is when he jumps out of the plane and goes past the camera. The second piece is when he’s looking for Henry” — actually his stunt double — “in the air and grabs onto him. And the third piece is as he’s falling with Henry where he disconnects his oxygen bottle and connects it to Henry. And that’s the most time-consuming piece, which of course means that he’s got to be able to complete all of that action before he reaches his minimum safe altitude by which he has to deploy his chute.

“Because the sequence is at dusk, we have three minutes of available light every day to shoot. They would just rehearse until the light was right, and they’d go up and they’d get one take every day, to get one of these three pieces. It took several tries to get the first piece, several tries to get the second piece, several tries to get the third piece. And so that took 106 jumps of us rehearsing and shooting to get that two-and-a-half, three-minute sequence.”

(Why couldn’t they just land and take a cab? “Landing on the Grand Palais looks a lot more spectacular than landing in a parking lot on the outskirts of Paris,” Mr. McQuarrie said.)

2. Hanging Off a Plane, ‘Rogue Nation’

Mr. Cruise dangles from an Airbus A400M as it takes off.

“When we proposed it to Airbus, they said it was impossible. And our approach was to say, well, if we were going to do it, how would it be done? And once people start to consider the possibilities, it’s a slippery slope to the place where they find themselves doing what they deemed impossible.

“Tom’s wearing a harness under the suit. But of course the harness doesn’t protect him from the real dangers of the sequence. One, if the pilot overaccelerates the plane, there’s no harness in the world that’s going to keep Tom on the plane. The other danger is any debris on the runway. Tom was struck by a pebble. He said it was like being shot. And the real danger is bird strikes. If a bird flew past and struck Tom, it would be like a cannonball. The exhaust from the engines is extremely punishing and very toxic.

“And finally, Tom is wearing earplugs and contact lenses. They cover half of his eye — they’re not like the little lenses that just cover your iris. So he couldn’t really see. He couldn’t really hear. I would have to direct him with very large gestures and communicate in the simplest possible way. And Tom said to me, ‘If I look like I’m panicking, I’m acting. Don’t cut. Only if I tap my head’ — he put his palm on top of his head — ‘it means something’s wrong.’ There was one point at which Tom brushed his hair out of his face, and we were wondering, is he just fixing his hair, or is something wrong?”

1. Helicopter Chase, ‘Fallout’

Mr. Cruise pilots a chopper through mountainous terrain to retrieve and disable the remote detonator of two nuclear bombs.

“The hairiest one I can think of is the helicopter chase in the third act of ‘Fallout.’ Tom qualified” — for pilot certification — “on this helicopter in six weeks. Normally it takes three months; he trained with two crews working 16 hours a day so he could cut his training time in half. And we’re in New Zealand in low winter light, which means visibility is always a little tricky. You have two helicopters. The way you measure distance in a helicopter is a rotor width. And Tom was at times inside one rotor width from the other helicopter. He was less than a rotor width away. In some parts of the sequence, Tom’s doing the chasing, and in other parts he’s being chased — and we were always pushing for proximity, because that of course sold more danger. Tom is weaving in and out of canyons and gullies. There was one where his rotor blades were just a few feet away from the rock walls on either side. It was like flying through a broom closet.”

The director recalled that he and a producer “said while we were making it, if we knew what it took to shoot this sequence, we never would have started. Tom was having the time of his life.”

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‘Mission: Impossible 7’ Star Hayley Atwell Talks Hanging Off a Train With Tom Cruise and Female Representation in Action Movies

By Angelique Jackson

Angelique Jackson

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It’s 10 a.m. in Sydney, where Hayley Atwell is preparing to walk the red carpet as the “Mission: Impossible” crew’s newest member, joining producer and star Tom Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s ensemble of battle-hardened actors.

“This is a pure cinematic experience. It’s unadulterated entertainment, and of a huge scale,” Atwell says to Variety about “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” which finally hit theaters on July 12 following a two-year delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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“I’m aware that this is entertainment,” Atwell adds. “But I’m also aware that my responsibility as an actor is to contribute in my own small way to the kind of characters I want to see represented.”

Atwell plays Grace, a professional thief who becomes embroiled in Ethan Hunt’s (Cruise) latest impossible mission — tracking down a rogue artificial intelligence system. Among its various plotlines, “Dead Reckoning Part One” chronicles Grace’s origins, explaining how the pickpocket becomes an integral part of the narrative.

She’s seen the movie four times, the first at a screening for the cast and crew, with her mother as her plus one (and Cruise watching her mum instead of the screen to gauge her enjoyment.) So, what did mum make of the movie?

“She’s very vocal and effusive when it comes to the big action sequences. She’s like, ‘Oh my God, why didn’t you tell me you’re doing that?’” says Atwell, who quipped: “Because you would have been really nervous for me.”

The British American actor joins the IMF from the MCU, where she played Margaret “Peggy” Carter for more than a decade. Over the course of six movies and the ABC series “Agent Carter,” Peggy rose through the ranks to lead the government agency S.H.I.E.L.D. — challenging misogyny in the workplace with the same verve she nabbed supervillains. Plus, Peggy represents one half of the multiverse’s most enduring romance, as the first love of Steve Rogers a.k.a. Captain America (Chris Evans).

There’s really no comparison between Marvel and “Mission,” Atwell says. It’s really apples and oranges — or more specifically akin to performing Kenneth Lonergan’s adaptation of “Howards End” versus starring in Henrik Ibsen’s “Rosmersholm” on the West End .

“They’re just so distinctively themselves — a different group of filmmakers, different tastes, different character, different worlds,” she explains. “They just happen to be things that have become global phenomena.”

Yet there’s a bridge that carries Atwell from one franchise to the other: the way she personified both women.

“What I tried to do with Peggy — and I think it’s the reason I got the part in ‘Mission’ — I didn’t play her like I was in a superhero film. And with Grace, I’m not playing her like I’m in an action film,” Atwell notes. “Peggy taught me that I can be distinctively grounded in a character that’s going to stand out, rather than get consumed by the machine of something.”

A “Mission” movie is not your typical Hollywood machine. For starters, there’s no set script, so Atwell developed Grace from the ground up alongside Cruise and McQuarrie. “I didn’t feel like I was having to fit into a character that they’d created,” she explains, “because they hadn’t actually created one.”

Each scene offered an opportunity to add nuance and subvert any action movie stereotypes about “strong” women. “I thought, well, it’s an opportunity here to do many different takes” on the character, Atwell says. “I didn’t want her to seem that she was just trying to look cool, or femme fatale, or a sex object.”

She sees Grace’s motivation as one driven by some deep wound that’s caused the character to be distrustful of others and retreat from society. “Something’s got to have happened to her to interrupt the very deep human need that we all have to belong — whether it’s to our family, our social group, or some sort of tribe, or workforce that gives us a sense of identity,” she reasons, pinpointing why Grace can be “unpredictable, untrustworthy and inconsistent.”

The answer to that query is “Yes,” Atwell tells Variety , explaining that the mission she undertook with Grace was “to allow her and give her the platform to be more than one thing.”

“Dead Reckoning” features an abundance of female characters: Rebecca Ferguson plays Ilsa Faust, a former MI6 agent turned IMF ally; Vanessa Kirby as black-market arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis, a.k.a the White Widow; and fellow franchise-newcomer Pom Klementieff as the sociopathic assassin Paris.

“All the characters are so distinctive, and that’s what’s great,” Atwell says. “They’re never all one thing — they all come in with their own agendas and their own ideas about who they are and what they want to be and what they want to do to affect people in the scene. Any one of them could have a spin-off and collectively, too.”

It’s striking to see all four share the screen in one particularly tense scene — further demonstrating that their roles are additive, not competitive.

“Women in this franchise aren’t pitted against each other,” Atwell notes, adding that, “It’s a false assumption that that’s how it has to be, and probably more to do with a comment on the culture of celebrity that does seem to pit women against each other in a ‘Who wore it best?’ situation. But that mindset is not a creative act.”

On the topic of female representation, Atwell often recalls a line from art critic John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”: “Men act, and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.” Those words, Atwell says, have been true to her experience as an actor, and what she believes to be true for many women in the public eye. She wanted “Mission” to be different.

“I don’t want to feel that Grace is aware that she’s being looked at. I want to see what Grace is looking at,” Atwell says. “She’s in a world that’s over her head, but she’s in a hypervigilant state of trying to work out how to navigate it, and how to survive through it.”

Thus, Grace employs her sense of humor and other tactics like flirtation to get where she needs to go. “She can duck, dive and disappear, or she can call Ethan Hunt a ‘pervert’ publicly in order to escape him,” Atwell says, giggling at the character’s cheekiness in one key moment.

And since physical prowess is a prerequisite for the franchise, Atwell also underwent five months of stunt training, so she was ready to improvise whenever a scene required it. She experimented with different disciplines of mixed martial arts, worked on sleight of hand tricks and pickpocketing (the latter which she’s “terrible” at because she’s “an awful liar” ) and learned to drift in a race car.

“I think it comes from theater – I love working with props on a stage because you can convey so much and they’re an extension of your character,” she says, letting her inner theater nerd geek out. “The way that you stir a cup of tea can tell how much you hate someone you’re talking to, or that you’re trying to seduce them.”

Training for a “M:I” movie is like a boot camp, but it’s not about the aesthetics. It’s about building a different kind of strength and Hayley has the bruises to prove it. “At the time that I came to set, my body was fit for purpose,” Atwell says.

Part of that purpose was developing the shorthand between herself and Cruise so that Grace and Ethan could create an “elegant physicality” when handcuffed together. The duo also brushed up on their classic cinema, watching 70s heist movies like “Paper Moon” and “The Sting,” as well as “The Thomas Crown Affair,” “To Catch a Thief” and “Bringing Up Baby” to build a library of references to pull from tonally.

“When they’re sort of do-si-doing around the car with each other, there is this sense that these two people who are exasperated by each other share an origin story and are naturally working together whether they realize it or not,” Atwell explains.

During the car chase scene, Atwell was not only tasked with drifting the car while handcuffed to Cruise, but also taking performance notes from McQuarrie about adjusting Grace’s reaction to the circumstances. Add onto that the reality of filming with a swarm of fans and paparazzi watching the production speed through the streets. Here, her theater training again paid dividends.

“Live performance is a huge tool for a movie like ‘Mission,’ because when the curtain goes up, you can’t get a retake, and the audience are going to be there to watch if you fall flat on your face, or your downward inflections bore the audience to tears,” she explains. “You get feedback by picking up the atmosphere that that you’re helping to create in that auditorium.”

Atwell compares the atmosphere on set to becoming the eye of the storm, with Cruise leading the charge by maintaining his composure at its absolute center and her following suit. “You’re very calm in the midst of all this noise and stimulation and equipment and changes and locations, and COVID and paparazzi, and journalists and all that stuff,” she says.

The Rome chase takes place in two vehicles — a BMW M5 and a Fiat 500, affectionately nicknamed “Trixie,” for the way the tiny automobile whipped through the Italian streets and accidentally bamboozled Cruise.

Embracing those kinds of spontaneous moments are what made production fun. “The plot tends to be a metaphor for the making of a ‘Mission: Impossible’ film,” she explains. “McQ and Tom just go, ‘OK, well, this is what we’ve got today, so let’s actually find a way to use it for the movie.’”

And the idea of borrowing from reality works both ways. You see, when you’re so deeply immersed in a character for the length of time a “M:I” movie takes to make, it stands to reason that some of the skills will transfer. In Atwell’s case, it’s the driving, and now, her fiancé, music producer Ned “Wolfgang” Kelly really doesn’t like riding in the car with her.

“He’s like, ‘Please slow down. It’s quite erratic,’” Atwell says, laughing loudly at a memory of her panicked passenger’s reminder that she’s not in an action film. It’s just that the feeling of your adrenaline rising when you’re behind the wheel can be a little addictive. “It does sort of rub off on you,” she adds. “I have to rein it in a little bit and go, ‘I’m just going to the shop.’”

The training also paid off when Atwell returned to Marvel in 2022’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” for an action-packed cameo as Captain Carter. “Because I was so fit at that point, and I’d had such an education about how to move anatomically correctly and making sure that I was safe to do it, I wanted to do all the fighting,” she says. “I wanted it to go on much longer than it did.”

With “Mission,” her “scariest” stunt was the train sequence; it took nearly a year to complete because each car had to be built and filmed separately, with Atwell and Cruise shooting and re-shooting portions of the sequence to find the right tone.

“I’d see on the call sheet a year later that we’re going to spend the afternoon on that vertical train carriage again and be like, ‘Oh God, no, I’m so tired from that,’” she says. “So when you see Ethan going, ‘Do you trust me?’ and Grace just shakes her head — that’s me going, ‘Not anymore. I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s really scary.’ They loved it. They were like, ‘That’s going in.’”

Atwell notes that Cruise, too, gets a case of the nerves when risking his life for stunts. “Tom says it’s not that he doesn’t get nervous and scared, but that fear is OK for him. He accepts the feeling,” she says. “They don’t stop him from doing what he wants or needs to do.”

As for Atwell’s next mission — that’s territory unknown. “One thing at a time,” she says with a bright laugh, noting that “Dead Reckoning Part Two” is barely two-thirds through its shoot. “Jet lag is telling me the thing I want next is a little nap.”

Jordan Moreau contributed to this report.

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12 of tom cruise’s most jaw-dropping stunts.

From scaling a skyscraper to hanging on to the outside of an airplane as it takes off, here are some of the actor's most death-defying stunts.

By Carly Thomas

Carly Thomas

Associate Editor

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Tom Cruise has never steered away from challenging himself in his roles for projects. Especially since 1986’s  Top Gun , he has continued to push the limits of his body and acting, taking on his own stunts in most of his top films, including Mission: Impossible ,  The Last Samurai  and  Jack Reacher .

Most recently, Cruise took on several death-defying stunts in  Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One , including speed-flying down a mountainside as well as driving a motorcycle off a cliff and parachuting to safety.

The actor has previously said during an appearance on  The Graham Norton Show  that he has been “doing different stunts” since he was a child and that once he got into acting, he wanted to keep doing it to help with the “storytelling.”

“I feel that [when] acting you’re bringing everything, you know, physically and emotionally, to a character in a story,” he explained at the time. “And I’m able to do it [stunts], and I’ve trained for 30 years doing things like this that it allows us to put cameras in places where you normally are not able to.”

More recently, during a  conversation at Cannes  in 2022, Cruise reiterated that he enjoys performing his own stunts despite the danger, only this time he referenced one of the best athletes of Hollywood’s golden era.

“No one asked Gene Kelly, ‘Why do you dance?’” the actor said. “Why do you do your own dancing?’”

Below, The Hollywood Reporter has compiled a list of some of Cruise’s wildest stunts, some downright death-defying, throughout his decades-long career.

'Mission: Impossible' (Aquarium Scene)

In the first installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise in 1996, Cruise reportedly never swapped out for a stuntman in one particular scene involving an aquarium. In the sequence, Ethan Hunt, who would become one of Cruise’s most well-known characters, intentionally blows up a giant aquarium that stretches the length from the floor to the ceiling to help get away quickly. The explosive was so powerful that another person was sent flying through a glass panel, while Cruise went running with 16 gallons of water following right behind him.

'Mission: Impossible II' (Rock Climbing Scene)

In 2000’s Mission: Impossible II , Cruise showed no signs of plans to stop testing his limits. In the opening scene of the John Woo-directed film, the actor can be seen climbing and hanging off giant rocks on the side of a cliff. During filming, Cruise reportedly had only a safety cable to help soften any impact, which led to Woo actively sweating throughout the entire sequence because of how dangerous it was.

'Top Gun' (Parachute Scene)

In 1986’s  Top Gun , Cruise began seeking the thrill of doing his own stunts. But the scene when Maverick (Cruise) and Goose (Anthony Edwards) are ejected from the jet and parachute into the water (leading to his co-pilot’s death) nearly didn’t go as planned. Top Gun ‘s Barry Tubb told the  New York Post  on the film’s 25th anniversary that “Cruise came as close to dying as anybody on a set I’ve ever seen.” During filming, when Cruise was lifting up Goose’s body from the ocean, Cruise actually began to sink due to water building up in his parachute. According to Tubb, Cruise would have drowned if it was not caught early enough to get him out.

At the time of filming Top Gun , it was also reported that a veteran fighter pilot  died while shooting aerial footage for the movie.

'The Last Samurai' (Samurai Sword Scene)

In 2003’s  The Last Samurai , Cruise once again nearly avoided a tragic accident while doing his own stunts. While filming a fight sequence between Nathan Algren (Cruise) and Ujio (Hiroyuki Sanada), the two were riding on what were actually mechanical horses, in which one was supposed to stop moving before Sanada takes a swing at Cruise with a real samurai sword. But the horse didn’t stop, and Cruise reportedly came within an inch of the sword before Sanada was able to pull back, avoiding contact with Cruise.

“Tom’s neck was right in front of me, and I tried to stop swinging my sword, but it was hard to control with one hand,” Sanada previously told the  Daily Mail .  “The film crew watching from the side all screamed because they thought Tom’s head would fly off.”

'Collateral' (Car Crash Scene)

At this point, on-set accidents are nothing new to Cruise, and the same goes for an incident while filming an action scene with Jamie Foxx for 2004’s  Collateral . During an interview at the time , Foxx thought he nearly killed his co-star when he smashed into Cruise’s Mercedes-Benz during a chase sequence. “I hit the gas, the cab goes straight head on into [Cruise’s] Mercedes, and the Mercedes lifts off the ground and goes off the set,” he explained. Cruise added that although he was OK, he was tossed around the car. “I was hitting the roof,” he said. “I was down on the ground.”

'Edge of Tomorrow' (Another Car Crash Scene)

While filming 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow , Emily Blunt confirmed to Conan O’Brien on  Conan at the time that Cruise “really does everything and wants to do everything” when it comes to doing stunts. But she revealed that during one scene, his luck was tested once again. The actress said in one action sequence when she was driving and Cruise was in the passenger seat, the stunt coordinator tasked her with driving really fast down a road and then taking a sharp turn. She noted that the first take went well, but during the second, she took a turn too late and “drove us into a tree and I almost killed Tom Cruise.” Thankfully, Cruise was OK, and Blunt added that he was actually laughing afterward.

'Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol' (Scaling a Skyscraper Scene)

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol director Brad Bird said watching Cruise take on death-defying stunts is “just another day at work” for the film’s crewmembers. Specifically for the 2011 movie, the actor scaled Dubai’s 163-floor Burj Khalifa. In behind-the-scenes footage, Cruise can be seen climbing, swinging and running up and down the building, with only a wire keeping him from falling.

'Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation' (Plane Scene)

In 2015’s Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation , Cruise decided to take his intense stunts to the sky. In the film, the actor can be seen dangling on the outside of an Airbus 400 as it takes off. Robert Elswit, director of photography, told The Hollywood Reporter  at the time what went into making the stunt a reality while keeping Cruise safe.

“Tom was in a full body harness and he’s cabled and wired to the plane through [its] door. Inside the aircraft was an aluminum truss that was carefully bolted to the plane, which held the wires that went through the door, which held Tom,” the cinematographer said of the safety measures. “He was also wearing special contact lenses to protect his eyes. If anything hit him at those speeds, it could be really bad. They were very careful about cleaning the runway so there were no rocks. And we took off in certain weather conditions; there were no birds. And he’s sort of protected by the way the air moves over the wing.”

'Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation' (Underwater Breathing Scene)

In the Christopher McQuarrie-directed film, Cruise went from doing stunts in the sky to doing them underwater. For the said sequence in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation , the actor actually had to undergo training to be able to hold his breath underwater for six minutes. For comparison, professional divers hold their breath for anywhere between four and seven minutes,  according to the American Physiological Society , but even that can be very dangerous and could cause brain damage. Although Cruise scared crewmembers a few times by testing his limits underwater, in the end, he successfully completed the mission.

“It’s something I have always wanted to do,” Cruise said during an interview with USA Today at the time. “We’re underwater and we’re doing breath-holds of 6 to 6-1/2 minutes. So I was doing all my training with the other stuff (on-set). It was very taxing stuff.”

'Mission: Impossible – Fallout' (Building Jump Scene)

While filming a building jump scene in 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout , Cruise actually got hurt, which shut down production for six weeks while he recovered. During an appearance on The Graham Norton Show , the actor not only detailed exactly what went wrong but shared a video of the moment he broke his ankle during the stunt.

In the scene, while attached to two safety wires, Cruise’s character is meant to jump from one high-rise to another when chasing Henry Cavill’s character. Although he was meant to miss the landing and hit the side of the wall, his foot actually slipped and bent upwards on impact. The actor noted that he “knew instantly it was broken.” Cruise also revealed that his ankle was still healing while he was on the press tour for the film.

‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One’ (Speed-Flying Scene)

In the seventh film in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Tom Cruise shows that he has no plans to stop doing death-defying stunts anytime soon. For Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One , the actor learned how to do what director Christopher McQuarrie called “one of the most dangerous sports in the world.” Speed-flying, which is similar to paragliding, combines elements of parachute swooping to allow people to fly at high speeds down mountainsides while maintaining close to the slope. And Cruise did just that for one of the scenes in the latest installment of the action franchise. McQuarrie even noted that when Cruise was “flying very close to rocks,” the filming crew was in “absolute terror” behind the cameras. 

‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One’ (Motorbiking Off a Cliff Scene)

For Mission: Impossible 7 , Tom Cruise said he got to do a stunt that he had wanted to do “since I was a little kid.” And that stunt was riding a motorbike off a cliff and parachuting down to safety. Director Christopher McQuarrie explained that there were many elements needed to actually make it happen, as well as years of different types of training. Once Cruise felt like he was comfortable with each aspect of the stunt, that’s when the crew built the film’s final ramp on a cliff in Norway. A crewmember added that Cruise did a total of six takes of one of the “biggest stunts in cinema history.” 

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Tom Cruise's 'Mission: Impossible' Stunts Are a Bone-Breaking Ode to Old School Hollywood

The actor has always tried to act out his own action scenes whenever possible, however dangerous they might be. In doing so, he pays tribute to a lost age of filmmaking

In a time of maximal CGI and green screen backdrops, completely practical stunt work has become a relative rarity in film production. Tech wizardry is generally considered preferable to the dangerous and time-consuming task of hiring an entire team of coordinators, and while stuntmen and women clearly do still play a role, the most audacious action we see in major blockbusters tends to be computer-generated. (That often also means: lacking genuine jeopardy.) But nobody has ever made the mistake of accusing Tom Cruise of such malarkey.

Requiring a unique combination of athleticism, careful preparation to avoid injury, and cinematic nous – where to look, how to fall, and where the camera will best be placed to catch the action – practical stunt work is beginning to receive more appreciation by the wider public. News stories circulate about Cruise or Daniel Craig injuring themselves and holding up production, adding to the sense of jeopardy and good old-fashioned filmmaking. The Daily Beast recently published a piece with the headline: ‘Tom Cruise Keeps Risking Death For Our Entertainment. Thank God’. By its nature designed to fool the audience with an illusion of danger – that their favourite film stars are at risk – it makes sense that even the most garlanded and respected of stunt coordinators are often in the shadows. But as Marvel fatigue sets in and cinemas pin more hope on the kind of bruised and battered actioners that Tom Cruise specialises in, these professional daredevils are getting their due once again.

Filmmaker and former stuntman Chad Stahelski, with his specialism in martial arts choreography, has been one of the figures at the forefront of that visibility, with the hugely popular John Wick series and its bone-crunching practical effects. Whether spinning through Paris streets or endlessly, comically fighting up and then falling down the Sacre Coeur steps, Keanu Reeves’ willingness to put his body on the line – with the support of his experienced stunt team – resembles Tom Cruise’s, to some extent. Interestingly, in interviews, both Chad Stahelski and Wade Eastwood pay their dues to the older generation of stunt performers, understanding the difficulties of safely achieving the extraordinary. Both have mentioned the great Buster Keaton as a huge influence on their work.

Of course, for a large chunk of the early history of moving pictures, stunt work was by its nature practical: there was no other choice. The early slapstick comedians had the injuries to prove it, too – Harold Lloyd blew off a few fingers with dynamite onset. The death-defying stunts pulled off in the days before ‘health and safety’ was even a phrase, never mind an entire department, were positively toe-curling: stuntmen died or were maimed being attacked by ‘trained’ animals, drowning in river rapids, impaled by their own swords in battle sequences or falling from great heights.

The visual results were nonetheless often remarkable: live auto crashes, thousands of charging soldiers, people tip-toeing along the wings of biplanes. Suffice it to say, some things can only ever be seen in cinema of this vintage, given the insane level of risk involved. But even as late as the 70s, stunt people were at great risk. As Greg Powell, veteran British stuntman late of Bond and Bourne, recalls, ‘I used to use copies of The Daily Mirror as elbow padding in the early days’.

Finding the sweet spot between the excitement of capturing physical jeopardy and avoiding actual danger is thus the responsibility of modern filmmakers and stunt coordinators. Safety measures have increased greatly over the intervening years: soft-build sets to bounce off in fight scenes, airbags rather than nets to break falls, ex-military trainers brought in for stars, and extensive rehearsal and physical conditioning.

CGI may still be considered preferable by some – the argument can be made that the risks of practical stunt work are still there, regardless of safety measures. But you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs (or bones, maybe), and the gasp-inducing marvel of the sequences in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning are proof positive of that. Whether it's fighting on a replica 60-ton antique train at high speed or a motorbike jump that rates among the most elaborate and risky in Cruise’s career, practical stunts continue to push the envelope for what can be done onscreen.

The work that qualified and specialist professionals like Wade Eastwood are capable of belongs to the same tactile joy as that of an old-school film projectionist. Out with the old and in with the new is fine, but as Tom Cruise himself would be likely to tell you, there’s nothing like the real thing.

'Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One' is in cinemas now.

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Tom Cruise, Who Is 60, Shares Video And Backstory Behind Insane Mission: Impossible Stunt

I shouldn't be so shocked. But I'm shocked.

Do you know that primal element that kicks in when danger is near, warning us to flee in order to avoid bodily harm? Yeah, Tom Cruise doesn’t have that. I’m not breaking any news when I tell you that Cruise is a maniac when it comes to his stunt work. I mean that in the best way possible. The man puts his life on the line – literally – to accomplish eye-popping stunts, all in the name of entertaining his audience. We have already gone to some lengths to document the amazing sequences he’s pulling off in the upcoming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One . But a new video that was attached to the Avatar sequel , Avatar: The Way of Water , so that audiences could see it in IMAX has now been released, and it’s the wildest thing you will see today.

The video , posted above, shows all of the preparation that Tom Cruise and the Mission: Impossible crew have to put in just so that they can pull off one sequence from the highly anticipated sequel. The stunt, which we were able to see at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, shows Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt riding a motorcycle off of a ramp that sends him over a cliff in Norway… plunging him into a base jump where a parachute (we think) will take him onto a train down below. It’s intending to top the HALO jump featured in Mission: Impossible – Fallout , and is described by Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One director Christopher McQuarrie in the following way:

This is far and away the most dangerous thing we have ever attempted.

When McQ calls it that, you know this is something serious. He has been directing Mission: Impossible movies with Tom Cruise since the magnificent Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation , so he has guided Cruise through incredible plane stunts , motorcycle sequences that shut down the streets of Paris , and more. Cruise and McQuarrie feel a need to continuously top themselves with each new Mission: Impossible movie. After a motorcycle ride off a ramp into a base jump, however, I’m not sure what else these two can cook up… short to Tom Cruise taking Ethan Hunt to space , which has been the running joke for some time now.

This might be my favorite part of the video, to be honest. The look on Christopher McQuarrie’s face as he watches his A-list leading man performing death defying stunts proves that he is just as shocked and amazed by Cruise’s commitment as we all are. The joy of filmmaking is a delight to see.

We don’t know a ton about the plot of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning , or why this story needed two installments. It feels, to me, like Cruise and McQuarrie are bringing a chapter of Ethan Hunt to a close, with old characters showing up and Hunt being told that he needs to choose a side in a growing conflict. Also, as I have pointed out, Cruise is 60. How much longer will he be able to pull off stunt work on this level. He’s already a Hall of Fame GOAT when it comes to on-screen stunts. He has nothing left to prove. But if he feels like the story needs it, Cruise will do it. And we love him for that.

Look for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One when it opens in theaters on July 14. It’s one of many upcoming 2023 movies that we have circled as Must See in the coming year.

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Screen Rant

12 dangerous movie stunts tom cruise actually performed.

Tom Cruise is part actor and part daredevil. See which dangerous movie stunts the A-list actor performed himself.

Old school action heroes made men strive to be manlier. Think Humphrey Bogart, Bruce Willis, and Harrison Ford . If we didn’t believe they were actually jumping off buildings or ziplining between airliners, we trusted they had the mental and physical constitution to do it. Then came Tom Cruise , one of the last in a dying breed of genuine movie stars who actually fulfilled the demands of the script. Most actors would immediately dial their agents if they read, “Jimmy jumps off a cliff” in Act 2, but not Tom Cruise.

Time and time again, he has put his life on the cinematic line. He does this for one reason alone: to shake audiences out of their banality. In a business of smoke and mirrors, Tom Cruise continues to be a bona fide action hero in Hollywood’s sea of faux action idols. From climbing sheer rock-faces, running around skyscraper exteriors, to strapping himself on sky-bound cargo planes, Tom Cruise makes a compelling case for renaming CGI altogether: Cruise Generated Imagery.

Here is our list of the 12 Best Movie Stunts Tom Cruise Performed Himself :

Motorcycle Chase – Knight and Day

When you daydream about stunts in daily life, you must have a few double helixes from Evel Knievel’s DNA. While in pre-production for Knight and Day , Cruise thought of executing a motorcycle stunt that required Cameron Diaz to flip around on it mid-ride while soaring through the narrow streets of Seville, pull out two guns loaded with flash blanks, and empty both clips into the pursuing vehicles. Throw in some raging bulls for extra flavor, and you have the makings of one memorable scene. When Cruise’s vision of the stunt ended, he called director James Mangold and made the pitch.

You can check out the final result of Cruise's idea -  HERE .

Car Chase – Jack Reacher

For every drift, gear shift and hub smash in this scene, there is a steady push-in shot on Tom Cruise’s chiseled and focused face. The camerawork is as nimble as Jack Reacher himself, following his every move as he slides around in a muscle car of vintage glory. This scene is straight out of Bullitt, letting the cars do the talking while the characters internalize their angst. It’s a stick-shift kind of vocabulary. Cruise himself gets pretty banged up, as he sequestered his stunt driver to play Gran Turismo in the make-up trailer while he did all the driving scenes himself. This includes weaving through oncoming traffic, smashing into walls, cars and water barrels, while generally treating his blood red 1969 Chevelle SS like a bumper car. The most quiet moment of the chase might also be the most memorable, when Cruise steps out of his busted red Chevelle and takes refuge among the locals waiting at a bus stop, not one of whom gives him up to the police.

You can see Tom Cruise's  Bullitt -inspired Pittsburgh car chase -  HERE .

Shootout – Collateral

Perhaps Tom Cruise’s biggest stunt was deciding to play a villain. The silver hair and gray hit-man suit help turn the Risky Business charmer into a ruthless killing machine. In one of Michael Mann’s greatest films, Tom gets out of his “Ethan Hunt” cruise control and switches to manual overdrive as “Vincent.” Collateral will hold you in its vise-like grip until the credits roll, but the club scene in particular is worth a watch. Mann and Cruise rehearsed this lengthy sequence for weeks, knowing it showcased Vincent’s brutality as he steadily dismantles an entire security squad. Beyond the stabbing, neck twisting and gunplay, Cruise’s floor-bound barrel roll leaves quite the impression.

You can watch Michael Mann's clinically executed club shootout - HERE .

Rock Climbing – Mission Impossible: 2

Brian de Palma’s franchise launching film was a game changer for the action genre, but in comparison to its sequels, Mission: Impossible was a fairly modest film. For a series that rivals The Fast and the Furious in the ridiculous action department, Ethan Hunt’s debut showed a somewhat modest and eager agent earning his stripes. Simply put: Tom Cruise wore bifocals in much of the film. That all changed in 2000 with John Woo’s follow-up, Mission: Impossible: 2 . The film opens with Cruise dangling from a vertical cliff, the sound of his breath playing louder than the soundtrack. Just as the audience has started to accept the sheer insanity of Mr. Hunt, he completely loses his mind and decides to jump from his precarious perch to an even lower part of the rock.

Call it base jumping without a chute or a prayer of surviving. When he (surprise!) botches the landing and slides down the red rock face, staring death in the eye, his right hand magically finds a crevice in the rock and he survives. Except for the jump and the rocky Slip ‘N Slide, Cruise did every bit of the stunt work, even completing the Christ-like hang as he held himself up with both arms (Woo is a devout Lutheran and includes a Crucifix-composed shot in each of his films). This stunt arguably initiated Cruise’s obsession to outdo himself with open-air stunts.

Tom Cruise's dangerous rock climbing can be seen - HERE .

Runnin’ and Jumpin’ – Edge of Tomorrow

“Live, Die, Repeat” became the slogan for marketing Edge of Tomorrow , but it seems equally descriptive of Cruise’s stunt-bound existence. The pulsating action in director Doug Liman’s 2014 film feels dangerous, and that’s due in large part to Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt’s commitment to performing their own stunts. Running and jumping, flying and falling, amidst flamethrowers, gunplay and rocket launchers seems like an adolescent boy’s dream, and in looking at the behind-the-scenes footage, it looks like Cruise had a ball. Even if  Edge of Tomorrow  underwhelmed at the box office, it earned Cruise some of his best reviews in years, even though he  almost died while riding shotgun in Emily Blunt’s stunt car .

Check out some behind-the-scenes footage of the film - HERE .

Samurai Swords – The Last Samurai

Tom Cruise rarely loses his cool, but in Ed Zwick’s film about the dying Japanese warrior culture, he almost lost his head. The Last Samurai could have been his career’s swansong. As the story goes, Tom Cruise (who reportedly underwent samurai and martial arts training for more than half a year) rode a mechanical horse towards co-star Hiroyki Sanada. The Japanese actor’s horse was designed to stop on its mark but traveled an extra foot, sending Sanada’s sword just an inch from Cruise’s neck. As he later reflected in press junkets, Cruise executed full-length sword-play fights that had over 70 points of contact, all of which could have left a pile of severed appendages in their wake. Such is the dedication of Hollywood’s most bankable action star.

You can see Tom Cruise's behind-the-scenes preparation for these samurai fights - HERE .

Fish Tank – Mission: Impossible

If the virtue of a protagonist is augmented by the deviousness of his villain, therein lies the successful formula of Mission: Impossible . Henry Czerny’s Eugene Kittridge is such a WASPy punk that you can’t help but yearn for his demise. We don’t quite get that in the “fish tank” scene, but we are introduced to Ethan Hunt’s cunning, his signature MACH 5 running face, and the explosion of a massive amount of water (not to mention fish).

Check out the scene for yourself: consisting of Tom Cruise completing the stunt entirely on his own, as he blitzes past 16 tons of water - HERE .

Trustfall – Mission: Impossible III

There were a bevy of stunts in MI3, not least of which was Tom Cruise’s anointing of J.J. Abrams as the franchise’s latest leader. Abrams had only played in the TV sandbox, but thanks to Cruise’s fascination with Alias , he cut the queue and landed MI3 as his first directorial feature. This put J.J. Abrams in the hotseat, watching Tom Cruise risk life and limb in a medley of stunts. A seemingly simple yet terrifying sequence had Cruise barrel roll off the Vatican’s garden wall, suspended by a thin cable (the seeming trademark of the series) designed to tighten an inch before hitting the ground. Abrams and Cruise rehearsed the scene several ways, trying to find the right speed to optimize the stunt. The only construction preventing Cruise from landing face first was a barrage of men playing tug of war with the other end of the rope. If they slipped, Cruise went splat.

Watch some behind-the-scenes footage to see just how close Cruise cut it - HERE .

Knife Fight – Mission: Impossible 2

Knives are terrifying, but not to Tom Cruise. In fact, he was so determined to up the “wow” factor in MI:2 that he insisted Dougray Scott’s knife be real in the climactic scene of the movie. Sounds doable, right? Wrong. The tip of that knife was designed to be placed a mere quarter inch from Cruise’s cornea. Even that wasn’t enough for daredevil Tom. Though the knife was carefully measured and harnessed to a device off screen, Cruise wanted Scott to try his damnedest to break it. Had things gone wrong, Cruise may have needed that Vanilla Sky prosthetic ahead of schedule.

Check out the scene for yourself, and remember, kids, point knives away from you when walking - HERE .

Breaking Into Langley – Mission: Impossible

Just as the Bob Seger breakdance in Risky Business kicked off his career, Tom Cruise’s high-wire dive into the CIA made him an espionage star. Ask any stunt professional in the business and they’ll confirm: Cruise did the majority of this stunt, holding himself perfectly still in a state of elevated suspension. The height made it dangerous, the inverted position pressurized, but the length of time Cruise had to hover in place is the true feat. He’s something of an acrobat. The scene was so memorable that it was parodied in various television commercials and in Shrek 2 (and less memorably in the Leslie Neilson spoof  Spy Hard ).

Take a look at this iconic scene from Brian de Palma’s classic film - HERE .

The Burj Khalifa – Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Statistics show that 77% of people who watched MI:4 in IMAX broke into a cold sweat during this scene [Ed: not a real statistic] . This includes the insurance company Mr. Cruise fired so he could fulfill his stunt-man fantasies. Defying gravity, sanity, and a slew of other words that end in “ity,” Tom Cruise ran, slid, crawled and flew around the Burj Khalifa in Dubai for eight days. Dangling from a 1,700 perch, the only thing more disorienting than the dizzying heights was Cruise’s stunning level of comfort while doing it. He looked as peaceful as a grandmother at her bridge table. Sure, he had helicopter-bound harnesses (and was born devoid of fear receptacles in his brain), but this is easily Cruise’s most terrifying stunt.

The behind-the-scenes footage is even more mind blowing then what made the final cut, so be sure to give it a look - HERE .

Airplane Hang – Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

We’ll have to wait until July 31st to see this stunt in full, but the trailers, the tabloids and the behind-the-scenes featurettes make Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation look as memorable as any of Cruise’s previous performances. Harnessed to an A400m Airbus, Cruise experiences pounding wind velocity on the exterior of a plane. Despite all the safety measures, it wouldn’t have taken much for Cruise to become one with the runway. A projectile particle or the slightest unhinging of the embedded cameras could have ended it all. One wonders how the insurance company reacted to director Christopher McQuarrie’s pitch, but judging by the film’s marketing and Tom Cruise’s talk show appearances, he survived the stunt and pulled it off with style.

Check out this behind-the-scenes featurette on the stunts of  Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - HERE .

Which Tom Cruise stunts do you find most impressive? Sound off in the comments below!

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The Nine Wildest Mission: Impossible Stunts, Ranked By the Danger They Posed to Tom Cruise

By William Goodman

Over the last 27 years, the Mission: Impossible franchise has continued to establish itself from other movies in the spy genre by being synonymous with two things: Tom Cruise and insane stunts. With the subsequent release of each Ethan Hunt adventure comes another behind-the-scenes featurette about how far out there—read: how close to actual death—Cruise went to entertain and enthrall the audience, whether it’s learning how to hold his breath underwater for six minutes, or scaling the exterior of the world’s largest building.

With the release of the seventh installment in the series, Dead Reckoning Part One , Hunt states to a character that their life “will always be more important to me than my own,” which feels like a declaration of Cruise’s guiding philosophy for stunt work. To wit: Matt Damon recently recalled a conversation he had with Cruise about a stunt in Ghost Protocol —which started with Cruise deadpanning that he fired the film's first safety coordinator who deemed the stunt too dangerous.

Cruise fulfills his mission statement in the latest film by driving a motorcycle off a cliff and then parachuting down a ravine—establishing a new landmark in Hollywood stunt work. As the franchise reaches this new height, we’re looking at some of the most dangerous stunts from the Mission series and ranking by degree of danger, from least to most.

Danger Level: Mild

An exploding fish tank feels like small potatoes in the larger scope of the Mission series, but Cruise has said the stunt was indeed “very crazy.” Talking to Graham Norton in 2018, Cruise recalled that he and the stunt coordinator couldn’t get on the same page about the timing of the explosion, resulting in a Who’s On First -like back and forth about whether the go was on the count of three or the count of one. Considering the sequence involved a detonation, glass, and plenty of water, the potential for danger was high, but hardly life-threatening. miscommunication is enough for someone to get seriously injured if it wasn’t timed correctly.

Danger Level: Unnecessarily High

Cruise’s wholehearted approach to dangerous stunt work began in earnest with John Woo’s Mission: Impossible 2 . The actor put Alex Honnold to shame with an extensive free solo climbing stunt in the film’s opening . "I was really mad that he wanted to do it, but I tried to stop him and I couldn't," Woo told Entertainment Weekly back in 2000 . "I was so scared I was sweating. I couldn't even watch the monitor when we shot it." Woo’s nervousness stemmed from the fact Cruise was insistent on not only doing the climb himself but only wearing a thin safety wire through the staggering seven different takes it took to get the shot as he climbed over the constructed cliff face. His dedication comes through in the final product and is easily the highlight of an otherwise lackluster installment in the franchise ( despite my editor’s attempts to convince me otherwise ).

Danger Level: Probable Death

By Daniel Riley

By Abe Beame

By Alex Hoyt

After Ghost Protocol —more on that later—the Mission franchise shifted into featuring a signature, outrageous stunt for each of its installments. For his first Mission , Christopher McQuarrie conjured up the idea of Cruise strapped to an A400 cargo plane—an image so memorable it became the central focus of the movie’s marketing. McQuarrie recently stated the fear around A400 stunt wasn’t so much about Cruise falling off (he was strapped into the door through a rigged vest) but external factors beyond their control, like a rock on the runway or a bird strike while the plane was taking off. With so little protection, the timing had to be perfect.

Danger Level: Technically Low, made higher by insane repetitions

While still extremely dangerous, the challenges around the HALO (high altitude, low opening) jump in Fallout were mostly logistical. McQuarrie and crew had to create a new style helmet for the sequence that not only provided oxygen for Cruise (who is the first ever actor to perform the jump typically reserved for military operations) but also had lighting in the interior so audiences could see his face. The timing of the natural lighting made it so the jump could only occur in a three-minute window, so the jump required over 100 attempts to get it right. The real risk came from ensuring Henry Cavill, Cruise, and the cameraman all hit their marks so they wouldn’t collide in midair while falling at 200 miles per hour. In any other movie, this would be the showstopper. And yet, in Fallout , it’s just the aperitif.

Danger Level: Navy Seal levels of difficulty

Much of the pre-release marketing of Mission films in the last decade typically includes Cruise discussing his training to execute on a stunt accordingly. Rogue Nation leaned into the fact he learned how to hold his breath underwater for a staggering six minutes to shoot the underwater vault heist sequence as practically as possible—and all in one long take despite the fact the finished sequence is intertwined with multiple cuts. Legend has it that safety and compliance teams on set were extraordinarily nervous about the whole thing, and it wasn’t until Cruise convinced them otherwise that it was safe and that he could handle it accordingly.

Danger Level: Low, but it’s always the one you least expect

For all the dangerous stunts in Mission movies, it’s odd that something as simple as a broken ankle is the only major injury to befall Cruise. While jumping from one building to another, Cruise sustained that injury and knew immediately he’d messed something up, as the take in which he broke it is the one McQuarrie used in the final cut. Filming on Fallout was subsequently delayed while he recovered, but Cruise seemed to take it in stride; a behind-the-scenes clip shows him shrugging it off like he forgot to grab something at the grocery store.

Danger Level: Extremely High

There are approximately three different “holy shit” moments throughout Fallout ’s third-act helicopter setpiece: Cruise jumping onto the rope as the helicopter takes off, free-falling off the helicopter, and then piloting the chopper himself while performing a 365-degree corkscrew dive. The scariest bit of all included the drop—Rebecca Ferguson declared that she thought Cruise actually fell from the helicopter. If you remember, Cruise falls and hits the accompanying load dangling at the bottom so hard that it knocks the wind out of him each of the several times he performed it. Not to mention, the corkscrew dive was so dangerous that “most pilots wouldn’t attempt it,” per stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood .

Danger Level: Technically Very High…(but less blatantly flirtatious with death than the movies that followed?)

In other movies, a stunt involving scaling the side of the Burj Khalifa would have taken place on a set with a replica or with CGI. Not in the world of Mission . For Ghost Protocol , Cruise climbed the world’s tallest building with only a single safety rope. A single misstep and everything could go south very quickly. The stunt set the tone for everything else that’s followed, as dedicating himself to the reality of it all makes it one of the defining stunts of the Mission franchise.

Danger Level: Trolling death at this point

In comedy, there’s the concept of putting “a hat on a hat,” which means that layering one joke on top of another different joke leads to the whole thing falling flat. In less-skilled hands, the now legendary cliff bike jump in Dead Reckoning could feel like a hat on a hat. It combines elements of previous Mission stunts, notably the HALO jump and the Paris bike chase from Fallout , but it’s accomplished and shot in such a way that it feels breathtaking at every single stage. The fact that Cruise performed the stunt several different times, despite its high risk, is stunt work at its very best.

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8 Tom Cruise Stunts That Gave Everybody Anxiety

He's the greatest action star... and sometimes his stunts are downright panic-inducing.

Tom Cruise is the action man of the century. His passion for his craft is praiseworthy, and it reflects through each of his movies. He gives himself to his projects, ensuring that viewers will receive a cinema experience like no other.

RELATED: 50 Essential Action Movies Every Serious Film Fan Should See

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that there are few others, or no others, who can do what Cruise does. He's never one to shy away from facing danger; seeing him leaping across rooftops and sprinting from explosions is a natural sight by now. Watching Cruise is always a blast, but sometimes his stunt work has to be viewed from behind our hands.

Hanging Onto The Plane – Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)

At some point, you would think Cruise would be eager to take a backseat in stunt work. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is neither the time nor place for the star to kick his feet up and relax because yes, that is genuinely him clinging on to the side of a plane as it genuinely takes off. What can we say? Missing your flight is a nightmare.

Watching this scene feels like a ‘how did I get here’ moment for Cruise, but he perseveres through the wind and hangs on for dear life – not to mention he is dressed impeccably for the occasion. In a featurette about the film, the leading man admitted that he lost sleep prior to performing the stunt, which we can’t really blame him for. Nerves are at an all-time high for audiences seeing the sequence for the first time; despite knowing that Cruise is harnessed in, and safety procedures were (presumably) triple checked, Rogue Nation still manages to hold our hearts in our throats.

The Underwater Vault Heist – Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)

Anything sort of stunt-related to water comes with its risks. It’s pretty dangerous in hindsight; if protocols aren’t followed, things could end disastrously (potentially fatal); Cruise takes on the challenge like a champ, practicing methods of training which would allow him to carry out this stunt underwater with little support.

While audiences might be used to seeing Cruise soaring and gliding his way through the sky – whether in an aircraft, suspended by wires, or gripping onto various barriers – he is equally adept at stunt work in water it seems. When Ethan has to infiltrate yet another vault, he is pulled beneath the surface and nearly drowns. Of course, this is Ethan Hunt, and it will take a lot more than gallons of water to wipe him out. Throughout his training, Cruise adapted to being able to hold his breath for a mighty six minutes. This is a risky move even for veteran divers; though Cruise clearly doesn’t let fear stand in his way.

Scaling The Burj Khalifa – Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

It might be one of the tallest buildings in the world at approximately 2,722 feet, but Dubai’s Burj Khalifa is no match for this Hollywood superstar. If there is any doubt about Cruise’s ability to actually scale the skyscraper, it’s quickly eliminated with close-up shots.

RELATED: The Films of Brad Bird Ranked: From 'Incredibles' to 'Tomorrowland' and Everything in Between

Ethan Hunt seems to enjoy making life difficult for himself. In order to evade security and hack a server, the team opt to have Ethan clamber his way up a building. Cruise has a hankering when it comes to performing his own stunts; climbing up the Burj Khalifa not only proved to be highly dangerous, but also went on to become a controversial career move within the franchise and Cruise’s entire filmography. Initially refused permission by Ghost Protocol ’s insurance team, Cruise flew solo and sourced his own company to give him the go ahead. Dangerous it may be, yet Cruise pulls it off beautifully. Plus, the end result is pretty damn cool.

The Knife – M:I-2 (2000)

How could this sequel top the energy of its predecessor? By having a knife drop down an inch from its leading star’s eyeball is clearly the right answer. That’s right, Tom Cruise is the mastermind behind this cringe-worthy shot enough to make you squirm in anguish over what could have led to a disturbing aftermath.

Cruise takes stunt work to the extreme. He doesn’t appear to be afraid to face danger – or a blade to the eye in this case. The actor even uses a real knife in the scene, which heightens the risk of injury, but excels in creating a truly nerve-wracking environment for both film crew and viewers.

The Helicopter – Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018)

Considering the amount of daredevil strategies Cruise has put himself through over the years, it’s a wonder that he’s come out relatively unscathed every single time. Although, during filming for the sixth Mission Impossible installment, it became well documented that Cruise had sustained a broken ankle while jumping from building to building – caught on camera and all. Even with said injury, however, Cruise powers through and impressively delivers edge-of-your seat suspense.

RELATED: How to Watch the 'Mission: Impossible' Movies in Order (Chronologically and by Release Date)

It’s hard to narrow down which of Cruise’s action-packed stunts is the coolest – mostly because Cruise is probably the coolest guy in Hollywood and so by default, anything he does is awesome. In this scene, we watch as Cruise dangles onto a rope attached to a helicopter mid-flight before jumping into the pilot’s seat. Usually, we’re already impressed by the sheer core strength used by Cruise to pull himself up the rope, but he then goes on to fly the helicopter by himself. His dedication to his work is commendable, particularly down to the fact that he underwent flight training and received his pilot certificate so that he could hit this milestone.

Free Falling – The Mummy (2017)

The 2017 reboot of The Mummy was hit with less-than-favorable reviews . Cruise, on the other hand, rises above every expectation . When a plane in the picture is attacked by ravenous birds, the aircraft loses all function and goes into free fall mode, throwing around the passengers as it plummets to the ground.

Cruise’s active role in the stunt work just adds to its authenticity. The idea behind the scene itself is possibly more terrifying than anything from a horror movie; Cruise and his co-star Annabelle Wallis are literally bouncing around the interior while under zero gravity. One thing's for sure: working with Cruise means full practical participation.

Infiltrating the CIA – Mission Impossible (1996)

Besides it famous theme tune, the most iconic part of the Mission Impossible franchise is arguably Ethan’s daring attempt to infiltrate the CIA Headquarters . To clear his name, Ethan must retrieve the NOC list and is willing to stop at nothing to recover the document – even if it means dangling from the ceiling.

Ethan - and effectively Cruise - is suspended out of the overhead vent and has to avoid setting off any alarms in place; even the tiniest unprovoked action puts the whole at risk. This is tension done well as various hurdles are thrown at Ethan such as beads of sweat, a pesky rat, and Krieger’s ( Jean Reno ) butterfingers which cause Ethan to drop mere centimeters from the floor. It is the scene that makes the film, eliminating all sounds except Cruise’s breaths of exertion. After seeing this moment, it becomes a question of how far the actor will go to secure a shot, establishing Cruise as the action man through and through.

The Halo Jump – Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018)

Despite the production-halting injury Cruise endured earlier throughout filming, jumping between buildings isn’t exactly the most daunting – or life-threatening – act shown in Fallout . He scaled a building at over 2,000 feet, but this Halo jump makes the Burj Khalifa look like child’s play, with Cruise diving out of a plane at 25,000 feet.

His co-star and fellow action man Henry Cavill steps away for a stunt double to fill his boots, whereas Cruise once again puts himself right on the path of adrenaline. The Halo jump – which is a high altitude, low opening jump – is extremely exhilarating and perilous, and this is not lost on viewers. In fact, Cruise is the first actor in the history of film and television to have partaken in the jump. With the Mission Impossible films, you never know what you’re in for, though it’s almost a guarantee to be a one-of-a-kind intoxicating joyride.

NEXT: The Best Action Movies on Netflix Right Now

20 Thrilling Behind-The-Scenes Facts From Tom Cruise's Biggest Films

F or nearly 40 years, Tom Cruise has been one of the biggest movie stars in the world. From his breakout role in Top Gun to the franchise lead in Mission Impossible , few stars boast the resume that Cruise has. He's also worth a cool $500 million. He's kind of a big deal. With four decades of movies under his belt, it's fair to assume a lot of interesting things have happened behind the scenes. Here are the craziest Tom Cruise movie secrets you need to know!

He Won't Sign Onto A Movie Unless He Gets To Do His Own Stunts

Tom Cruise famously performs the most dangerous stunts in all his movies. Watch any Mission Impossible movie, and it's shocking how much danger the action star is willing to put himself in. Cruise reportedly refuses to sign onto movies that won't let him do his stunts.

Say a movie wants to cast Cruise but won't let him jump from high rise to high rise for a critical chase scene. The producers better start looking for a different, more risk-averse actor. Tom Cruise feels the need, the need for speed!

He Took Lead Role In Valkyrie Because He Looked Like The Real Person

The movie Valkyrie is based on the true story of Colonel von Stauffenberg's assassination attempt on Hitler during World War II. When Cruise was offered the role, there was no sales pitch that convinced him to sign on. Instead, he noticed that he bared a striking resemblance to the German soldier.

Cruise was sold, proving sometimes looks are all that matters. The movie was a moderate success, earning $200 million worldwide. Doing his own stunts has its downfalls.

Mission Impossible: Fallout Literally Broke Tom Cruise

Mission Impossible: Fallout came close to missing its summer 2018 release date after Tom Cruise broke his ankle performing a stunt. The film had to take a break from filming in 2017 after Cruise couldn't stick his landing after a scary jump. The hiatus put the movie's release in serious doubt.

Never doubt Tom Cruise, though. After a brutal seven-week recovery, cameras were able to roll again. He also continued punishing his body by doing his stunts. All his hard work paid off. A seventh movie in the profitable franchise is already being planned.

The Last Samurai Almost Killed Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise earned an Academy Award nomination for his role in The Last Samurai . If it wasn't for his co-star saving his life, we'd be writing a very different article right now. Using real samurai swords rigged for safety was a bad idea when one of the rigs broke.

The sword came one inch from Cruise's neck before Hiroyuki Sanada stopped it. That reminds us of the helicopter scene at the end of the first Mission Impossible ! Somehow it always comes back to Ethan Hunt.

Anne Rice Hated His Casting In Interview With A Vampire

Without author Anne Rice, there would be no Interview With The Vampire . Having written the book, she was not happy to see the film cast Tom Cruise in the role of the vampire Lestat. She was so upset with his selection that she publicly criticized Cruise and everyone involved with the film.

After the movie came out, Rice changed her tune. It turns out Tom Cruise was perfect for Lestat, and he proved it with his performance. To apologize, Rice bought a two-page ad in Daily Variety praising Cruise's portrayal of her most famous vampire.

Les Grossman Was Created For Tropic Thunder By Cruise

When Ben Stiller was struggling to write Tropic Thunder he had Tom Cruise read the script. Cruise suggested he include a movie executive in the film as a way to create pressure on the characters. Later, he decided to play the role of Les Grossman himself, under two very odd conditions.

The first condition was the character have fat hands. The second condition was that the bald and overweight studio executive be a dancer. And that is how one of the most memorable characters in movie history was created.

The Iconic Risky Business Dance Was Adlibbed

Even if you've never seen Risky Business , you've probably seen Tom Cruise's infamous underwear dance. According to the actor, he made up the routine himself, on the spot, "I just ad-libbed that," he said during an interview .

But how did he stick the landing on his slide to enter the scene? As he explains, "I dusted the floor and then put stick (tape) on the other side so I would get the center frame on that and wore the socks."

The Mummy Was A Real Monster Behind The Scenes

The Mummy was supposed to start Universal's "Dark Universe." That is until Tom Cruise got his hands on it. According to reports, Cruise took over every aspect of the film, from the story to the direction, and even the editing.

Despite having a team hired by Universal, Cruise brought in his own editor and screenwriter, then wrangled control of the direction away from Alex Kurtzman. For all his meddling, Cruise's version of The Mummy earned terrible reviews and scared audiences away. Made for $190 million, the film only grossed $80 million stateside.

Cruise Destroyed A $100,000 Camera Filming Days Of Thunder

Tom Cruise's "need for speed" is iconic, and it got the better of him while filming Days of Thunder . Playing NASCAR driver Cole Trickle, Cruise drove his stock car during several scenes. I

n one scene he lost control of the car and crashed into a wall, destroying a $100,000 camera in the process.

He Didn't Get Paid For Minority Report

Tom Cruise was so passionate to film the 2002 film Minority Report with Steven Spielberg that he refused to take a paycheck. Spielberg refused money also, something he claimed to have on his last eight films. Instead of getting money upfront, the pair cut a deal to earn 15 percent of the movie's gross.

Minority Report made $358 million worldwide, netting Cruise and Spielberg around $54 million each. That's pretty amazing. They took a chance on a passion project and it paid off big time!

He Was A Passenger In A Car Accident During Filming For Edge Of Tomorrow

For Edge Of Tomorrow , Emily Blunt had to drive a van with Tom Cruise as her passenger. The van needed to be seen shaking for one particular scene, so producers had Blunt make a hard turn at a pretty high speed. But she lost control and the van crashed into a tree.

She was upset that she could have injured (or even killed) Cruise, but fortunately, they both walked away unharmed. And even laughed about the incident later.

One Stunt He Didn't Perform

We know that Tom Cruise prefers to perform even the most dangerous stunts himself. But according to director Martin Scorsese, there was one stunt that he didn't complete when filming the 1986 drama The Color of Money .

His character had to perform a bunch of complicated pool shots, which wasn't a problem for Cruise. Except for one: a shot where his ball had to leap over two others and sink a third. Scorsese said that he thinks Cruise could have made the shot but it would have taken two days. And that's just too long during movie production, so an expert was brought in to do the shot.

He Broke His Thumb Making The Outsiders

The 1983 coming-of-age drama The Outsiders featured a fight between two rival gangs, the Greasers and the Socs. Things got pretty out of control during filming and one of Cruise's thumbs was broken in the scuffle.

He wasn't the only one to get hurt in the fight, either; two of Cruise's fellow actors were also injured. Tom Howell got a black eye and Emilio Estevez's lip was cut. That must have been quite a brawl!

He Lost A Lot Of Weight For Risky Business

The creators of Risky Business really wanted Tom Cruise to be as baby-faced as possible. To prepare for the role, he got serious about dropping weight fast. He told People that he followed a strict eating plan and jogged daily in the brutal Florida sunshine for five weeks. And then when he hit his target weight, he stopped exercising completely "so I could put on a little layer of baby fat."

"[Joel Goodson is] a very vulnerable person,” Tom explained. “I didn't want any physical defenses up for him. No muscle armor at all.”

Tom Cruise Has An Impressive Set Of Lungs

For 2015's Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation , Tom Cruise had to hold his breath for almost six and a half minutes! We knew he did all his own stunts but this might be one of the craziest of them. He called the experience unpleasant but explained his training technique to EW .

"You get rid of the regulator, get rid of the bubbles, get on the side and we wanted to do it one shot, so they were very, very long shots," he said. “I'd have to hold it consistently, you know safely, up to four minutes almost for every take.”

He Really Sang In Rock Of Ages

For the 2012 musical Rock of Ages , Tom Cruise insisted on singing his own parts. Of course, he did, right? He trained for four months, up to five hours each day to perfect his voice.

Cruise also filmed the scene where he sang "Pour Some Sugar On Me" while Def Leppard (the band that originally performed the song) watched. The guy just doesn't like to make things easy for himself.

Born On The Third Of July

In the 1989 war drama Born on the Fourth of July , Tom Cruise played a real-life Vietnam War veteran named Ron Kovic. Kovic was actually born on the 4th of July, as the title indicates.

It turns out that Cruise and Kovic almost share the birthday. Cruise was born on July 3, though, just a day early. Audiences didn't mind the discrepancy (as if they were even aware of it), as the film pulled in $161 million worldwide.

He Wasn't Expecting Emily Blunt To Kiss Him In Edge Of Tomorrow

Maybe he hadn't read the script thoroughly, because it sounds like Tom Cruise was surprised when Emily Blunt kissed him during filming for Edge of Tomorrow . She opened up about the moment to BBC Radio . "I mean, [it was] great. I don't think he was expecting it. I just sort of planted one on him," she said.

Blunt continued, "I think he was a bit taken aback. He was like, 'Oh my god! This is what we're doing.' Well, Tom had read the scene but he hadn't really read the stage directions. There were some new pages."

He Holds A Huge Box Office Record

We already know that his movies rake in tons of money at the box office, but Tom Cruise holds another distinction in that area. He became the first actor ever to star in five consecutive movies that each made more than $100 million in the United States.

The films were A Few Good Men (1992), The Firm (1993), Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), and Jerry Maguire in 1996. That's a pretty good run for the money.

Cruise Inspired A Character In A Movie He Wasn't Even In

Although he's been in some live-action Disney movies, Tom Cruise hasn't yet voiced an animated character for the studio. However, he was the inspiration for a very famous Disney prince. Can you guess which one? Turns out that Aladdin was based on the actor!

While providing commentary for the 2004 DVD release of the film, producers revealed that executive Jeffrey Katzenberg decided that the animation should be modeled after Cruise because of his "iconic hero" look.

This Is The Worst Tom Cruise Cameo, According To Movie Critics

Tom Cruise has been in over 40 movies, but it's his uncredited 1988 role that's being called his worst cameo.

• Tom Cruise's short cameo in Young Guns was not well-received, but the movie was still a box office success.
• Even in his uncredited role in Young Guns, Tom Cruise displayed his early interest in performing stunts.
• Known for his daring stunts in Mission: Impossible, Cruise's early days of heart-stopping action started with Top Gun.

Tom Cruise has delivered many memorable roles over his four decades on-screen. He's not just known as a leading man, he has also made numerous cameos and uncredited appearances in movies.

Despite successful cameos in Tropic Thunder, Austin Powers in Goldmember and The Outsiders , not all his minor roles have landed. His appearance in 1988's Young Guns is one of Cruise's less successful appearances. Although it allowed him to showcase his love of stuntwork and starred some of the hottest actors of the generation, the film was poorly received.

With just 43% on Rotten Tomatoes, Young Guns was considered a disappointing Western that chose style over substance. Despite the less-than-stellar reviews, the movie grossed $45.7 million in the US and Canada and was a box office success.

In the following, we take a look at Tom Cruise's uncredited role in Young Guns and why movie critics say it's Tom Cruise's worst cameo. We also reveal how Cruise's small role in Young Guns was actually major for his career performing his own stunts.

Tom Cruise's Worst Cameo In 1988's Young Guns

Tom Cruise makes a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in Young Guns . The 1988 film is a fictionalized version of Billy the Kid's adventures during the Lincoln County War. Due to its star-studded cast, which featured Kiefer Sutherland, Emilio Estevez, and Charlie Sheen, the film is associated with the brat pack.

For a brief moment, the Tom Cruise appears as a henchman for Jack Palance's character Lawrence Murphy. Cruise is on screen for a short time, hidden behind a mustache and a cowboy hat , before he is shot down. If you didn't know it was the Mission Impossible actor in the role, he would be easy to miss.

Does Kelly McGillis Still Keep In Touch With Tom Cruise After Playing His Love Interest In Top Gun?

Tom Cruise's appearance in the movie is uncredited. It is thought that Cruise was just on set visiting when the director, Christopher Cain, thought it would be fun to add him to the movie for the final battle. Although his cameo adds nothing to the story, it's a nice little slice of trivia for movie fans.

Compared to his Tom Cruise's other cameos , Young Guns is an insignificant addition to his filmography. His other cameos use Cruise's star power and charisma to make an impression. In Tropic Thunder, he plays a morally corrupt Hollywood exec; in Austin Powers in Goldmember , he appears as a meta version of himself; in Rock Of Ages , he briefly appears as a flamboyant rockstar.

Although Young Guns was met with mixed reviews, the 1988 movie did well at the box office, and a sequel was made in 1990 with the principal cast returning.

Why Tom Cruise's Young Guns Cameo Was Important To His Career

Although Tom Cruise's role in Young Guns is unremarkable and far-fleeting, it does display his early interest in stunt work . Since his appearance in the movie about gunslingers seeking revenge, Cruise has become known for his dangerous stunt work.

Cruise admitted that he has always loved doing dangerous things , spending his childhood doing "flips off of [his] house into the snow" and performing precarious bicycle jumps over ditches.

Tom Cruise Refused To Discuss His Worst Box Office Film Ever After The Final Version Differed From The Director's Cut

Cruise explained to Graham Norton on his chat show that he has "always loved fast cars, motorcycles, hiking, and climbing."

“I feel that [when] acting you’re bringing everything, you know, physically and emotionally, to a character in a story, And I’m able to do it [stunts], and I’ve trained for 30 years doing things like this that it allows us to put cameras in places where you normally are not able to.”

During an appearance at Cannes in 2022, Cruise admitted he doesn't intend to give up the dangerous stunts anytime soon .

“No one asked Gene Kelly, ‘Why do you dance? Why do you do your own dancing?’”

How Tom Cruise's Stunt Work Has Grown Over The Years

Tom Cruise has become known for performing death-defying stunts in many of his movies, most notably the Mission: Impossible franchise. Over the last two decades, the Minority Report actor has climbed the world's tallest building, hung from helicopters, and held his breath underwater for a significant amount of time.

Even before he took on the role of Ethan Hunt, he was doing his own stunts in 1986's Top Gun . The scene in which Maverick (Cruise) and Goose (Anthony Edwards) are ejected from the jet and parachuted into the water nearly caused the Rain Man star serious injury.

Actor Barry Tubb told the New York Post on the film’s 25th anniversary that “Cruise came as close to dying as anybody on a set I’ve ever seen.” Cruise almost drowned during the scene as his parachute filled with water, and the actor started to sink.

“They were refilling the camera or something, and luckily, one of the frogmen in the chopper saw his chute ballooning out,” Tubb, who played Wolfman in the movie, explained.

“He jumped in and cut Cruise loose right before he sank. They would have never found him. He would have been at the bottom of the ocean.”

Tom Cruise Pushes For ‘Top Gun 3’ After Nearly Losing His Life During 'Mission: Impossible' Stunt

One of Tom Cruise's earliest Mission Impossible stunts involves his character, Ethan Hunt, blowing up a huge aquarium in the 1996 film. The stunt saw the actor running with 16 gallons of water following behind him. He followed this up in the sequel with his rock climbing stunt, where the actor had only a safety cable to help soften any impact.

In Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol, director Brad Bird referred to watching Tom Cruise take on death-defying stunts as “just another day at work." Most noticeable on the set of the 2011 movie, the actor scaled Dubai’s 163-floor Burj Khalifa.

Tom Cruise's love of doing his own stunts has also caused him some issues over the years . When filming Mission: Impossible Fallout, the actor broke two bones in his ankle when leaping between two buildings. The video footage of the accident soon went viral, with many praising him for the lengths he goes to for cinema.

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Rebecca Ferguson Says Her Mission: Impossible Character's Death Was 'Collaborative,' Not 'Enough Space' in Franchise

With “a lot of characters” joining the Tom Cruise franchise, Rebecca Ferguson says she had to make a difficult decision to have the “awesome” Ilsa Faust exit

Keith Hamshere/Paramount Pictures/ Everett 

Rebecca Ferguson is clarifying the reasons behind her exit from the Mission: Impossible franchise. 

The actress behind Ilsa Faust called the character’s planned death in 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One “collaborative” in an upcoming interview on WrapWomen’s UnWrapped podcast, per TheWrap . 

“Ilsa was becoming a team player,” said Ferguson, 40, of her butt-kicking assassin first introduced in 2015’s fifth entry in the Tom Cruise -led series, Rogue Nation . “And we all can want different things, but for me… Ilsa was naughty. Ilsa was unpredictable.”

In the franchise’s sixth and seventh entries, there were “a lot of characters coming in, not leaving enough space for what she had been,” she added.

Ilsa’s introduction to the Mission: Impossible world preceded Vanessa Kirby as Alanna Mitsopolis a.k.a. the White Widow, Angela Bassett as CIA Director Erika Sloane, Henry Cavill as CIA assassin August Walker, Pom Klementieff as assassin Paris, Hayley Atwell as thief Grace and Esai Morales as terrorist Gabriel.

It was the latter character who murderously ended Ferguson’s reign as the “rogue” Ilsa, as the Dune star reportedly said on UnWrapped . “To speak very clearly — because I know a lot of people are sad about it, I’m sad about it — I had filmed three films. My [contract] deal was done.” 

Chiabella James/Paramount/Everett

She added that she loves her Mission: Impossible character “beyond words. I think she’s the most awesome, fantastic character.”

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Other considerations, she said, were the physical and logistical commitments to continuing in a blockbuster action franchise. “Selfishly, that’s a lot of time to make a Mission film. And unless you’re going to have a lot of screen time, that’s a lot of time sitting around waiting to film a huge movie that could take over a year to film.”

Ferguson added, “There’s a moment where you think it needs to be worth it, not just to love the character and to embrace Tom and [writer-director Christopher McQuarrie ] and the story. I want to work, man. I want to work. I don’t want to sit in a trailer… ​​It is so intoxicatingly exciting when you’re rolling, but there’s a lot of waiting.”

Daniele Venturelli/Getty

For a growing franchise — whose eighth film is expected to hit screens on May 23, 2025 — the star noted, “The more characters that are brought in, the more waiting.” After wrapping up Ilsa's story in Dead Reckoning Part One , Ferguson pointed out, she filmed both Dune movies and two seasons of Apple TV+ drama Silo . 

Ferguson also stars in the 2025 sci-fi drama Mercy with Annabelle Wallis and Chris Pratt.

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