Tom Cruise is renowned for performing all his own stunts, by his own insistence, no doubles are used. He is relentless in pursuit of the perfect take, often risking his life to capture the most authentic action scenes possible. Adrenaline might as well be his middle name.
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
In Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015), Cruise performed a jaw-dropping stunt where he clung to the side of a military airplane during takeoff, at an altitude of 1,500 feet. He repeated the stunt eight times. His only safety measures were a harness and specially designed contact lenses to protect his eyes from intense wind pressure.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
In Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018), Cruise broke his ankle while leaping from one rooftop to another. He misjudged the landing, causing his ankle to twist violently. Remarkably, he continued running to finish the take before collapsing. Production was halted for six weeks to allow him to recover.
Another high-risk moment in Fallout saw Cruise speeding through the streets of Paris on a motorcycle without a helmet. This dangerous decision was made to maintain character continuity and raise the stakes of the sequence.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, one of the franchise’s most iconic stunts features Cruise riding a motorcycle off a cliff. After launching into the air, he had to deploy a parachute mid-fall. The scene was filmed multiple times, with the atmosphere on set described as electric with tension.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
For Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025), Cruise filmed a scene inside a real submarine. During the sequence, he was breathing recycled carbon dioxide in a confined space, relying solely on the equipment he had on hand, which only allowed for ten minutes of safe use. The movie was just released today, May 23, 2025.