‘Mission: Impossible’ star Tom Cruise defies age with dangerous stunts: experts

Tom Cruise has proven to be one of the most daring actors in Hollywood.

Throughout his career, Cruise has starred in many action movies, most notably the “Mission: Impossible” and “Top Gun” franchises. While most stars opt to have stunt doubles perform the more dangerous scenes in their films, Cruise likes to perform them himself.

“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning,” the seventh installment of the franchise, promises to feature one of his most dangerous stunts to date, and at 61 years old, Cruise shows no sign of stopping.

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So how is he able to pull off such demanding stunts?

According to Christine Haas, entertainment PR expert and CEO of Haas Media, it’s thanks to the consistent work he’s put into the body over the years.

“Tom Cruise is notorious for his physical fitness and overall rigorous discipline,” Haas explained to Fox News Digital. “After speaking with a director who worked very closely with Tom Cruise over the past decade, it was very apparent that he has a high level of energy and is consistently auditing his behavior and actions daily with the help of his Scientology team.”

“This level of demand and drive allows him to defy age and perform physically demanding stunts, leading to the consistent development of a masterful personal brand.”

But these stunts pose a serious risk. Doug Eldridge of Achilles PR explained to Fox News Digital that Keanu Reeves also did most of his stunts throughout the “John Wick” franchise, but Reeves and Cruise are really the only ones playing that dual role — of actor and stuntman — in Hollywood these days.
 

“Insurance is a big factor in all of this,” he explained. “Studios have to take out aggressive policies to cover actors, stunt sequences, set locations, etc. From their point of view, the idea of Cruise holding onto the wing of an airplane or jumping a cliff on a motorcycle has really become a one-off in Hollywood.”

“Few (if any) actors have the desire or dedication to do it, and even fewer studios have the willingness to underwrite that type of effort. In a sense, this is almost a ‘grandfathered’ aspect of Old Hollywood — Cruise is the last and only one doing this type of stunt work; when he’s done, that niche and chapter will close with him.”

Haas suggested, “I believe he is one of very few celebrities who can continue with these types of risks because of the intense physical and mental protocol he lives by … without that consistent training, it would be far more dangerous. Like someone training for a marathon, he stays prepared instead of allowing his fitness level to regress and expose him to injuries.”

Here is a look back at some of the actor’s most death-defying stunts over the years.

HALO Jump 

The sixth installment in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” featured a number of crazy stunts, including what is known as the HALO jump.

Usually conducted by military special forces, HALO stands for “high altitude, low opening.” During the parachute jump, an individual jumps out of a plane at an extremely high altitude, usually 25,000 to 40,000 feet, and doesn’t open their parachute until they’re about 800 feet from the ground. According to the National Air and Space Museum, an average skydiver will only go up to 15,000 feet and deploy their parachute at 3,000 feet.

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One of the biggest concerns about the stunt was the possibility of losing oxygen when jumping from such a height. According to the Hollywood Reporter, a special helmet was made to allow Cruise to execute the stunt, which also acted as an oxygen mask and a windshield to protect his face.

“The aircraft is going between these C-17s between 160 and 200 miles an hour, so at that level of turbulence, we had to find a way to exit the aircraft,” Cruise said in a behind-the-scenes feature. “Then it was, we only got one take a day. I spent the whole day training and at night we would get that one take, and if there was one mistake, that was it, the take was gone.”

They ended up doing more than 100 takes to get the shot just right.

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Business Insider reported that the stunt, which was being filmed in England, almost didn’t happen because the Royal Air Force didn’t think it was safe and insisted they do the jump from a lower altitude.

“Tom didn’t want to fake it — he wanted to do it for real at 25,000 feet,” stunt coordinator Allan Hewitt told the outlet. “But the producers said they weren’t going to another country. It really looked like we were going to fake it with the RAF.”

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They were eventually able to film the stunt how they wanted after production was halted due to Cruise injuring himself, causing them to miss the window of opportunity the RAF had set aside to film with them. They ended up filming the stunt in Abu Dhabi to get the scene how they wanted it.

“If Tom didn’t break his ankle, we would have ended up faking it, which nobody wanted,” Hewitt said.

Broken Bones

Although it doesn’t seem like his most dangerous stunt on this list, jumping from one building to another for “Mission Impossible – Fallout” left Cruise with a broken ankle.

The star’s injury caused production on the movie to be delayed for a few months while he healed. In an interview on “The Graham Norton Show,” Cruise revealed he went back to filming the movie before his leg had completely healed in order to finish the film in time to meet the release date.

According to the film’s writer and director, Christopher McQuarrie, the stunt never involved Cruise successfully making the jump and landing on the roof of the second building.

“He was always supposed to slam into the side of the building. That’s what gives the stunt its energy,” McQuarrie told Empire in August 2017. “On the fourth try, he hit the building at a slightly different angle, and he broke his ankle.”

While on “The Graham Norton Show,” Cruise and the rest of the “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” cast watched footage of the actor’s accident, with Norton pointing out that Cruise continued acting and finished the scene even after the break.

“I didn’t want to do it again,” Cruise said. “I knew instantly it was broken, and I just run past camera. We got the shot, it’s in the movie. That profile shot, both the shots are in the movie. … I just went, I said, ‘Sorry guys, it’s broken. Take me to the hospital, it’s broken. That’s a wrap.’ The crew got on the phone and made their vacation arrangements.”

Hanging off the Burj Khalifa

One of the most dangerous stunts Cruise has ever pulled off in a “Mission: Impossible” movie came in the franchise’s fourth installment, “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.”

Cruise first climbs 200 feet up the side of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, and eventually ends up hanging out of one of the building’s windows, all while 1,700 feet in the air.

At first, production was unsure if the owners of the Burj Khalifa would allow them to film on the building, so they built three floors of the exterior in a soundstage. According to the film’s stunt coordinator, Gregg Smrz, the owner initially only allowed them to film on-site for one day. However, after a great first day of filming, he allowed them to come back, and the soundstage was only used once.

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“That was probably the most nail-biting day of the show,” Smrz told Yahoo News in 2021 about filming Cruise’s fall from the building. “Somebody said, ‘What if the cable breaks?’ And I said, ‘That’s not an option.’ We actually did the math, and there was enough time of free fall for him to text me on the way down and for me to receive it!”

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Not only did Cruise complete the stunt without getting hurt, he also decided to take things a step further and pose for a picture sitting at the very top of the building. He was taken to the top with a helicopter and posed without being attached to any wires.

He discussed the picture during an appearance on “The Graham Norton Show” in 2014, revealing, “I didn’t feel like I would fall. I wasn’t thinking of falling that day. … I don’t feel invulnerable, but I didn’t feel necessarily vulnerable.”

Hanging on for dear life

The opening scene of “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” featured one of Cruise’s most death-defying stunts.

In the scene, Cruise hangs on to the door of an Airbus 400 as it takes off and flies around for at least six to seven minutes at a minimum of 1,000 feet, and he continued to hang on as the plane landed and taxied on the runway.

Many measures were taken to ensure Cruise would be safe while performing the stunt, including providing the actor with specially made contact lenses to protect his eyes.

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“Tom was in a full body harness, and he’s cabled and wired to the plane through [its] door,” cinematographer Robert Elswit told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015. “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.”

To successfully capture the stunt, a camera was mounted onto the plane and a helicopter flew next to the plane to capture shots of Cruise hanging onto the door. In an interview with “Entertainment Tonight,” Cruise explained they did the stunt eight times in freezing temperatures.

Elswit called Cruise “the most obsessive artist” and said the actor probably wouldn’t want the sequence to be in the movie if a stunt double was used. “I’m always stunned. What inside of him makes it possible for anybody to do that kind of s— and not be scared s—less? He loves it,” Elswit said.

“I couldn’t sleep the night before, and I was just going through my mind, ‘Did we check everything?’ and then came the day. I was like, ‘OK, this is really going to happen,” Cruise said in a behind-the-scenes featurette of the film.

Cruise told “Entertainment Tonight” that the only thing he was thinking when he was getting ready for the stunt was “Holy s—.”

“Going down that runway, I was thinking, ‘Holy s—!’” Cruise said. “It’s not that you don’t feel that fear, it’s just it doesn’t stop me from doing it. I kind of enjoy that feeling. … We went from the studio to the airport, and it was a foggy, rainy night, and we landed and this thing just looked like a beast. It was in the fog and it was lit. It was just sitting there, like, ‘Yeah!'”

Free climbing

Cruise climbed the side of a rock for the dangerous opening scene of “Mission: Impossible 2.”

Not only did he have to climb the boulder, he had to jump across a gap between two rocks, simulate a fall and then hang from a rock ledge before pulling himself up onto the rock.

Producers tried to convince the actor to perform the stunt on a sound stage, but Cruise was adamant about doing the scene in the deserts of Moab, Utah. The film’s director, John Woo, told “Entertainment Weekly,” “I tried to stop him and I couldn’t,” admitting he “couldn’t even watch the monitor” while filming.

In a behind-the-scenes featurette for the film, Cruise explained he didn’t blame Woo for being so nervous on the set, saying, “John was so nervous that I might plummet to my death.”

“We had five cameras on the cliff, including a helicopter camera, a camera on a crane and cameramen hanging from safety cables, but we had focus problems, so we had to do it again and again,” Woo told “Entertainment Weekly.” “But Tom would say, ‘I’m OK, John, don’t worry, I want to do it one more time.'”

“The opening sequence just wouldn’t have been the same if he hadn’t done it himself,” co-star John Polson told “Entertainment Weekly.” “No amount of special effects can make you feel like that because you can tell that it’s really just him.”

While everyone on the set was nervous, Cruise explained in a behind-the-scenes featurette that he was just excited to climb.

“I’ve always wanted to climb, and I love climbing, and I’m always working … with the kids and with Nic (then-wife Nicole Kidman), so this gives me a good excuse. I get to climb with the world’s greatest,” Cruise said. “I’ve never had a problem with heights. As a kid, anytime I’d get to the edge, I’d want to jump off. I don’t know what it is, it’s subconscious. I don’t want to kill myself, I want to fly.”

Helicopter hanging

In yet another death-defying stunt, Cruise hangs from a rope attached to a flying helicopter in a scene for “Mission: Impossible – Fallout.” 

The scene required Cruise to fly a helicopter, so he took the necessary 2,000 hours of in-flight training and got his pilot’s license.

“I remember it was freezing, my hands were numb,” Cruise said about climbing to the helicopter in a behind-the-scenes video. “I have to try to climb as fast as I can up that rope, and then it’s a free-fall to the bag.”

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While Cruise knew he was fully in control of the stunt, his co-stars watching from the ground were terrified.

“I actually thought he fell, and I heard myself scream,” Rebecca Ferguson said in the Blu-ray interview, and Henry Cavill added, “There was an audible gasp from the crowd. That’s a huge drop.”

In a behind-the-scenes clip detailing the stunt, producer Jake Myers explained that the most nerve-wracking part of filming the helicopter chase was the 360-degree barrel roll he needed to execute, saying it is so dangerous even most seasoned pilots won’t try it.

“Flying a helicopter takes a lot of skill,” aerial coordinator Marc Wolff explained in the feature. “To put someone like Tom in a situation like this is almost impossible to imagine.”

Myers explained that when a helicopter chase is filmed, there typically aren’t cameras pointed toward the pilot, but they wanted to make sure audiences knew Cruise was the one really piloting the aircraft, so they found a way to mount cameras on all sides of the helicopter to showcase Cruise’s new talent.

Since learning to pilot a helicopter for the movie, Cruise has flown many more times, and he has been known to land in some questionable places. When filming “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1,” the airport was closed and Cruise was forced to land his helicopter in the backyard of a British family. They weren’t told who was in the helicopter, only that it was a “VIP who was running late.”

“I thought it would be kind of cool for the kids to see the helicopter land in the garden,” Alison Webb, the owner of the home, told the BBC. “He basically arrived and got out, and it was like, ‘Wow.’ He went straight over to the children for a chat, then came over and elbow-bumped us and said thank you very much. Then he said if the kids would like, they could go up in the helicopter.”

Underwater mayhem

One of the most impressive stunts Cruise performed was for “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” when Cruise filmed a scene underwater, holding his breath for six minutes.

While it was possible to film the scene using CGI or take frequent breaks for Cruise to catch his breath, the actor insisted the stunt be as realistic as possible and trained himself to hold his breath for a record-breaking 6 and a half minutes.

“Normally in underwater sequences, people hold their breath for 10 seconds, 15 seconds max,” Cruise said in a behind-the-scenes video. “So, I had to prove to everyone that it was actually safe and spend time with the safety guys and the safety officers to show them, look, not only is it safe, it’s better that I know how to hold my breath because I’m going to be very relaxed. No one’s going to have to rush in, no one’s going to have to panic.”

The free-diving expert on the set, Kirk Krack, explained that he trained Cruise using a breath-hold specialization program that is used for the military. Crew members were both shocked and terrified while watching Cruise train, with one person saying in the video, “Tom’s very comfortable underwater, and he likes to challenge the crew by staying under longer than he should on a breath-hold, get us all worried.”

Cruise spoke about the experience on “The Graham Norton Show” in 2016, saying it took a lot of practice to get past the pain of pushing his body to the limit, and he explained the agony he felt the first few times he tried it.

“You have these free divers that came in and trained me how to do it. It’s not pleasant,” Cruise said on the show. “You get to the moment where you train your system to, ‘I’m controlling the breath.’ I’ve got a low heart rate anyway, very low heart rate, which means my body’s not using as much oxygen, but also we did stuff to bring the heart rate down even lower and certain breathing exercises.”

Cruise held the record for the longest breath hold for an actor until recently, when Kate Winslet surpassed his time by holding her breath for 7 minutes and 14 seconds while training for “Avatar: The Way of Water.”

“Poor Tom,” the actress told USA Today. “I mean, I don’t know Tom at all – I’ve never met him in my life – but I’m sure he’s getting very fed up of hearing this story of how I broke his record. I loved it, though. … I was amazed how good I was at it and how I just kept getting better.”

The most dangerous stunt to date

In the new, seventh movie in the franchise, “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” Cruise performs what he is calling his most dangerous stunt so far.

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The stunt consists of Cruise riding a motorcycle off a long ramp placed at the edge of a cliff and then immediately engaging in a base jump. 

“This is far and away the most dangerous thing we’ve ever attempted. We’ve been wanting to do this for years,” Cruise said in a behind-the-scenes look at the stunt. “Wanted to do it since I was a little kid. It all comes down to one thing: the audience.”

According to the film’s stunt coordinator, Wade Eastwood, Cruise put together a team of experts in a number of specialties, including BASE training and canopy training, as well as intense skydiving training and motocross training.

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“I had about six seconds once I departed the ramp to pull the chute, and I don’t want to get tangled in the bike,” Cruise told Empire magazine in October 2021. “If I do, that’s not going to end well.”

In order to get the stunt just right, Cruise practiced the base jump with 30 skydiving exercises a day, amounting to more than 500 dives, as well as 13,000 motocross jumps. Replicas of the final ramp were constructed in a field in England for Cruise to practice the stunt.

Cruise recently spoke with “Extra” at the New York City premiere of the film, saying that “a lot of training” went into making sure the stunt went right on the day.

“Years and years of all the motorcycle and all the parachutes, and then we just refined it and had to do it,” Cruise said on the red carpet. “We didn’t know what was going to happen on that motorcycle when it went off. It was very interesting. It was exciting. … It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. When I was a little kid, I used to build ramps and go off and have some terrible crashes on my bicycles, but it was a lot of fun doing that.”

The future of Tom Cruise, action star

For decades now, Cruise has continued to push his body to the limits, doing things that most actors would never consider.

According to Haas, “Regarding how long Tom Cruise can continue performing these dangerous stunts, it’s difficult for anyone to predict. Ultimately, the decision will depend on his personal judgment, the demands of the roles he chooses and the advice of his professional team.”

“However, it has become part of his legacy brand, and it’s clearly something that drives millions to the theaters. To say it’s impressive is quite the understatement.”

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Eldridge added, “Only Tom knows [how much longer he can keep going]. Fans love the fact that he doesn’t use a stunt double and seldom utilizes a green screen. That said, the only two ‘teams’ that are undefeated throughout history are Mother Nature and Father Time. Eventually, the latter will catch up with Cruise, but based on what we’re seeing in 2023, Tom still has a commanding lead.”

“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is out now.