- The first actor to complete a HALO jump on camera
- Sustained cracked ribs and broken bones
- Told to stop smiling during filming stunts
Tom Cruise has never shied away from being his own Hollywood stuntman. Throughout his career, most notably in the Mission: Impossible films, he has constantly pushed his body to the limit with death-defying stunts.
His dedication to performing jaw-dropping scenes has often come at a cost, with injuries including cracked ribs, a broken ankle, and a dislocated shoulder. Yet, Cruise remains committed to doing his own stunts, showing no signs of slowing down – a true action hero.
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Speaking on the UK’s The Graham Norton Show, Cruise commented, “I am a very physical actor and I love doing them. I study and train and take a lot of time figuring it all out. I have broken a lot of bones! The first time of any stunt is nerve-wracking, but it’s also exhilarating. I have been told a few times during shooting a stunt to stop smiling.”
Let’s take a look at some of the craziest Mission: Impossible stunts that Cruise dared himself to do.
Plane Takeoff
In 2015’s Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Cruise performed an insane stunt, clinging to the side of an Airbus A400M as it took off. The plane hit speeds of 160 mph at 1,000 feet in the air. He was secured to the plane with a wire and a full-body harness, but still had to withstand the high altitude and powerful winds to his eyes. Cruise did eight takes to ensure they got exactly what they were looking for.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Robert Elswit, the film’s director of photography, said “There’s no digital Tom, and there’s no fake plane. He’s really strapped to an Airbus…when he wants to do something, he’ll figure out a way to do it. He’s the most obsessive artist. If it couldn’t actually be Tom on the plane, I think he wouldn’t want the sequence in the movie”
Climbing Burj Khalifa
In a feat of incredible core strength, Cruise scaled the world’s tallest building for 2011’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Burj Khalifa stands at 2,722 feet and in the scene he climbs the exterior using suction gloves. In reality, Cruise was secured by a thin safety cable that was digitally removed in post-production. Nevertheless, the scorching heat and strong winds made it very dangerous, not to mention the towering height.
Motorcycle Cliff Jump
Arguably his most dangerous stunt and one of the craziest in cinema history. Cruise drove a motorcycle off a Norwegian cliff and transitioned into a BASE-jump in 2023’s Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One. He spent months preparing for it with longtime Mission Impossible stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood. Preparation involved an astonishing 500 skydives and over 13,000 motocross jumps.
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Speaking to Men’s Journal, Eastwood explained, “If the canopy gets just one line twisted when he’s that close, he could be flung straight into the mountain face. That’s why getting the right jump was so critical and why we drilled it so much”.
Six Minutes Underwater
The average human being can hold their breath for 30 seconds to a minute. Tom Cruise is no average human being. In 2015’s Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, he held his breath for a staggering six minutes while submerged in a water tank. Only Kate Winslet has managed more – she stayed underwater for seven minutes and 14 seconds while filming Avatar: The Way of Water. In order to pull off the scene, Cruise went through strict training to slow his heart rate to restrict his need to breathe. He trained with freediving specialist and stunt consultant Kirk Crack.
Cruise showed how committed he is to making the vision a reality, talking to USA Today. “I have done a lot of underwater sequences. But we wanted to create a suspense underwater sequence without cuts. So doing that sequence was really interesting. We’re underwater and we’re doing breath-holds of six to six and a half minutes. It was very taxing stuff”.
HALO Jump
In 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Cruise made history as the first actor to complete a HALO (High Altitude, Low Opening) jump on camera. He leapt from a plane at an altitude of 25,000 feet, before deploying his parachute at the last possible moment. If that wasn’t enough, the scene was filmed at night, making the descent even more dangerous.
Cruise also had to ensure he was positioned 3 feet away from the descending cameraman, all while falling at 200 mph. Any collisions could have resulted in deadly consequences. Over 100 takes were done of the jump across 12 days. Prior to each jump, Cruise breathed pure oxygen for 20 minutes to combat decompression sickness.
