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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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Why does Tom Cruise do his own stunts? ‘No one asked Gene Kelly, ‘Why do you dance?’’

Cruise spoke at the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of “Top Gun: Maverick.”

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By Kyle Buchanan

• May 18, 2022

CANNES, France — It has been 30 years since Tom Cruise attended the Cannes Film Festival, and it’s evident the festival would like to make up for lost time.

Perhaps that’s why, in advance of a conversation with the actor billed as a “Rendezvous with Tom Cruise” — which was itself happening in advance of the evening premiere of Cruise’s sequel “Top Gun: Maverick” — the festival played a nearly 15-minute-long clip reel of Cruise’s filmography, hyperbolically scored to Richard Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra.” As the actor and audience watched from their seats, the reel touched on Cruise the action star, Cruise the dramatic thespian and Cruise the romantic, though the latter section, which featured him pitching woo at a bevy of leading ladies, notably left out Cruise’s ex-wife and three-time co-star Nicole Kidman.

“It’s wild seeing this reel,” Cruise said after taking the stage. “It’s like your life in ten minutes — very trippy.”

Cruise was speaking in front of a mostly unmasked crowd in the Salle Claude Debussy, which included hundreds of journalists and a team from Cruise’s agent, CAA. “After everything we’ve been through, it’s such a privilege to see your faces,” he said. He noted that “Top Gun: Maverick” had been held for two years because of the pandemic, though he refused to show it on a streaming service in the meantime. “Not gonna happen!” Cruise said to applause.

The 59-year-old star is insistent that his movies receive a lengthy theatrical window, a mandate that has sometimes put him in conflict with studio heads, who are eager to fill their streaming services with star-driven content. And in an era where big names like Leonardo DiCaprio and Sandra Bullock have no problem appearing in films for Netflix, Cruise remains a rare holdout.

“There’s a very specific way to make a movie for cinema, and I make movies for the big screen,” said Cruise. “I know where they go after that and that’s fine.” He said he even called theater owners during the pandemic to reassure them: “Just know we are making ‘Mission: Impossible.’ ‘Top Gun’ is coming out.”

Cruise is a discursive speaker who will leap out of one anecdote before it’s done to land in another, then another. (Perhaps that would make for an esoteric set piece in one of his action films?) But it was striking how often he returned to his formative experience shooting the 1981 movie “Taps,” in which he acted opposite George C. Scott and found himself fascinated by the way the filmmaking worked. Cruise said that while shooting, he thought, “Please, if I could just do this for the rest of my life, I will never take it for granted.”

And in the absence of any challenging questions from his interlocutor, the French journalist Didier Allouch — who was mostly content to burble blandishments like “You're absolutely extraordinary” to his interview subject — Cruise had the freedom to basically spin his own narrative of being a determined student of cinema and his fellow man. (And “Taps,” of course.)

“I was the kind of kid who always wrote goals on the wall of what kind of movies I liked or what I wanted my life to be, and I worked toward those goals,” Cruise said.

Though the conversation increasingly leaned toward bland generalities — “I’m interested in people, cultures, and adventure,” Cruise said more than once — it did provide one major laugh line when Allouch asked why he was so determined to do his own stunts in the “Mission: Impossible” movies, which will soon be receiving seventh and eighth installments shot back-to-back.

“No one asked Gene Kelly ‘Why do you dance?’” replied the star.

Kyle Buchanan , a Los Angeles-based pop culture reporter, writes The Projectionist column. He was previously a senior editor at Vulture, New York Magazine's entertainment website, where he covered the movie industry. More about Kyle Buchanan

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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.

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‘He is taking it to the next level’: the expert verdict on Tom Cruise’s epic Mission: Impossible stunts

Amy Johnston, a stunt veteran of Suicide Squad, Deadpool and more, analyses the new blockbuster’s hair-raising action sequences – and praises the star’s commitment to realism

T om Cruise’s new film Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is stuffed with spectacular stunts, but one in particular has grabbed the world’s attention: riding a motorbike off the top of a 1,240 metre-high crag, plummeting down its vertical, semi-cylindrical face, and opening his parachute, base-jump style, just before he hits the ground.

Cruise says its “far and away the most dangerous thing [he’d] ever attempted”, and in a video released by the film-makers , revealed he had trained for the stunt by making more than 500 skydives and 13,000 motocross jumps over an 80ft mound, as well as training for a year in base jumping (a specialist skill involving parachuting from fixed objects including radio masts and skyscrapers). A practice ramp was constructed in a quarry in Wallingford, Oxfordshire , stuffed with fall-breaking plastic bags, before taking on the actual leap off the Helsetkopen in Norway. Cruise performed the stunt six times for the cameras.

Amy Johnston, a stunt performer on films such as Suicide Squad, Deadpool and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, as well as the TV series Westworld, said: “In the movie theatre where I watched the film, as soon as he dropped, the audience was just dead silent. Everybody was trying to hold their breath, kind of they all felt like they were just having a heart attack.

“What he is able to do is create spectacle, and he knows how to entertain people. He did some of his biggest stunts to date in this film, and I was absolutely very impressed.”

Cruise has been making Mission: Impossible films for nearly 30 years, and will be for another 20 if he has his way . Since the premiere of the first Mission: Impossible in 1996, the role has been particularly testing, with the series renowned for its elaborate and physically challenging stunts, for which Cruise, 61, prides himself on his personal involvement. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, the seventh entry in the series, carries on the tradition, with other set pieces including a somersaulting Fiat 500, and train carriages hanging over a steep drop.

Johnston points out that while Cruise will have stunt doubles to assist him, as well as elements of CGI to heighten impact, the fact that he gets involved so heavily himself has an influence on the way scenes are filmed and their impact. “He knows how to bring the realism – you can see that it’s happening to him in closeup, like the effect of freefall on his face - and then you can also keep the frame very wide and see the action play out. It adds to the experience, and audiences definitely feel that.”

For all that, Johnston says one of the hardest stunts in the film is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment at the very start, when Cruise’s character, hiding in the desert, has to mount a horse as it gets up from a prone position. “This is very specialty-trained movement; it really needs timing, and it’s dangerous as well, because the horse could lay down on his leg if the timing is off.

“That is what Cruise always brings to his films, the extra details, because he didn’t need to do that. But he wants to do those things, and it adds a lot.”

Johnston also talks admiringly of the car chase scene in which Cruise and Hayley Atwell are handcuffed together as they manoeuvre a Fiat 500 around the narrow streets of Rome. “It was really fun, and not just because of all the somersaults and car hits, but the fact they were connected by handcuffs was so creative. I would love to break it down frame by frame, but I think that Cruise was definitely driving one-handed while being handcuffed. That whole scene [was a] really great job by the stunt coordinators and the stunt performers.”

Johnston says that a scene in which Cruise fights a selection of bad guys on top of a speeding train employed a mix of stunt trickery and actual exposure to the conditions. She suggests that film-makers may have employed harnesses or wires attached to a crane, which are then erased in post-production, for wide shots, and that greenscreen backdrops, where the background is added digitally, were probably used for tighter shots. “But the part where he had to duck under a bridge is one of those things that you have to really work on and go over and over and over and really get the timing right. It’s very scary to do something like that.”

Johnston is also supportive of the stunt industry’s campaign to gain recognition for its work through inclusion in the Oscars, which is spearheaded by John Wick director Chad Stahelski . “It would make a lot of sense, especially with how hard the stunt teams work to make a great film. These fight scenes, and car scenes, are all designed by the stunt team, who also figure out the best way to film them. The stunt coordinator and the stunt crew are such a huge part of a film.”

Mission: Impossible’s main rival in the blockbuster stunt world remains the Bond franchise , which stages equally elaborate scenes for its star performer – until recently Daniel Craig. But for Johnston, Cruise remains the gold standard: “It’s how he shoots action, doing his own stuff, that adds to the experience. I know in the Bond films, the actors are definitely doing a lot of fight scenes and such, but Cruise is taking it to the next level. It’s not that the action is better, but Cruise’s process does make a difference.”

• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
• Action and adventure films
• Film industry
• Mission: Impossible

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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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Watch Tom Cruise Break Down His ‘Most Dangerous’ Stunt Ever for New ‘Mission: Impossible’

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Tom Cruise is proving that no mission is too impossible.

The “Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part I” star shared a behind-the-scenes video of his stuntwork on the first installment of his farewell to character Ethan Hunt.

“So excited to share what we’ve been working on,” Cruise tweeted.

“Dead Reckoning” is the first half of the conclusion to the 1996 film franchise. Cruise has played undercover CIA agent Ethan Hunt for close to 30 years, with “Mission: Impossible 7” arriving in theaters July 14, 2023, soon followed by “Mission: Impossible 8” out June 28, 2024.

The stunt video shows Cruise training to achieve the  most dangerous stunt of his career, with him riding a motorcycle off a cliff. “This is far and away the most dangerous thing we’ve ever attempted,” Cruise says in the video filmed while in Norway for production in 2020.

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“It all comes down to one thing: the audience,” Cruise adds.

The “Eyes Wide Shut” alum trained in motocross and base jumping for months leading up to the filmed stunt.

“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 previously told Empire magazine about the jaw-dropping feat. “If I do, that’s not going to end well.”

Of course, that’s not the only cutting-edge stunt Cruise masters for “Mission: Impossible.” A first look at the film during Paramount Pictures’ showcase at CinemaCon earlier this year captured Cruise holding onto a plane while flying over South Africa. Cruise also recently thanked fans for their support in a video of himself jumping out of a plane .

“The ‘MI’ series really does represent the pinnacle of filmmaking excellence,” Paramount president Brian Robbins said earlier this year at CinemaCon. “And we have no doubt that this new picture will set the bar even higher.”

Robbins continued, “After five release dates and a whole bunch of rumors where this movie would end up, we are finally ready to bring this phenomenal movie to where it always belonged, and that is your theaters.”

Director Christopher McQuarrie helms the upcoming film, which will exclusively have a theatrical release due in part to Cruise’s urging. Production for “Dead Reckoning Part I” was repeatedly halted by the COVID-19 pandemic but eventually wrapped in September 2021. The budget reportedly ballooned upwards of $290 million during production, with additional funds allocated to finish post-production on the action epic.

So excited to share what we’ve been working on. #MissionImpossible pic.twitter.com/rIyiLzQdMG — Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) December 19, 2022

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Tom Cruise did that motorcycle stunt in ‘Mission: Impossible’ on Day 1 — here’s why

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More than half a year before the release of the upcoming movie “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One,” Paramount Pictures made sure audiences got to see Tom Cruise once again risking his life.

Cruise’s mind-blowing stunts have become a signature of “ Mission: Impossible ” films, each one seemingly topping the next. The key stunt in the franchise’s seventh installment involves Cruise driving a motorcycle off the edge of a cliff, dismounting and parachuting into a Norwegian valley. With the drop of its behind-the-scenes footage in December , the studio billed it as “the biggest stunt in cinema history.”

Though the moment has already been watched on YouTube more than 13 million times, and 30 million more times in the film’s trailers, it’s among the film’s most anticipated scenes. After all, we still don’t know how the stunt fits within the plot — What could be so dire that agent Ethan Hunt must jump off a cliff?

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While answers won’t come until the movie’s theatrical release July 12, we now know that the risky stunt was the first thing Cruise did on Day 1 of filming, which began in 2020. And it was all about risk assessment.

In a recent interview with “Entertainment Tonight,” Cruise said they started with the scene, in part, to allow the cast and crew to see whether he would be able to star in the $290-million film. After all, he could either get injured or die — or both.

“Well, we know we’re either going to continue with the film or not,” Cruise said, letting out a laugh. “Let’s know Day 1, what is gonna happen: Do we all continue, or is it a major re-run?”

Cruise added that he wanted to make sure his mind was clear enough to focus solely on the stunt.

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“You have to be razor sharp for something like that; I don’t want to drop that and shoot other things and have my mind somewhere else,” Cruise said. “You don’t want to be waking up in the middle of the night, ‘It’s still, I still, I still,’ and it has that effect.”

Cruise is no stranger to aerial stunts with a high probability of death. The “Top Gun” actor said preparing for the recent stunt “was years of planning,” a culmination of all the training he’s done with motorcycles, cars and aerobatics.

In the franchise’s last film, “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” (2018), Cruise jumped into a helicopter in midflight , taking the controls to chase another helicopter. In the same movie, he parachuted from a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III from 25,000 feet, close to five miles up, becoming “the first actor” to do so in a major motion picture, according to Paramount (most skydiving attempts occur at 10,000 feet).

In 2011 for “ Ghost Protocol ,” the “Jerry McGuire” actor climbed along the exposed walls of the world’s largest building, the Burj Khalifa of Dubai. And in 2015 for “Rogue Nation,” Cruise hung off the side of an Airbus A400M Atlas as it was taking off, a stunt that veteran stunt coordinator and frequent Cruise collaborator Wade Eastwood called “a stressful experience.”

The recent motorcycle stunt, which Cruise had apparently repeated six times, was no exception. Though the film’s computer-generated images make Cruise appear to be jumping off the rocky surface of the cliff, the scene required a large ramp to be built.

While Cruise is seen atop the motorcycle in the behind-the-scenes video, accelerating off the ramp, a helicopter and drone fly overhead to gather footage. The film’s crew, including director Christopher McQuarrie, are huddled in a nearby tent, faces glued to a set of monitors. After he abandons the bike and hangs in the open air, Cruise releases his parachute and the crew erupts in cheers.

“The only thing you have to avoid when doing a stunt like this are serious injury or death,” Eastwood, who has managed stunts for the last three “Mission Impossible” films, said in the BTS video. “You’re falling. If you don’t get a clean exit from the bike and you get tangled up with it, if you don’t open your parachute, you’re not gonna make it.”

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The scene wasn’t the only stressful one to shoot: Cruise said he also worried about a car chase that involved him handcuffed to a small car, steering with one hand while drifting along the cobblestone streets of Rome, with his co-star Hayley Atwell in the passenger seat.

“It’s plenty of challenges,” Cruise said with a wide grin, laughing once again.

“Dead Reckoning” had its world premiere Sunday at the Auditorium Conciliazione in Rome with Cruise and other cast members, including Atwell and Vanessa Kirby , in attendance. “Part Two” is expected to be released in June 2024. Filming wrapped in September for what has been rumored to be Cruise’s final appearance in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise.

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'Top Gun: Maverick' 's Insane Aerial Stunts: How They Pulled Them Off (With Expert Pilots, Not CGI)

Top Gun: Maverick aerial coordinator and stunt pilot Kevin LaRosa II explains to PEOPLE how the cast and crew pulled off unforgettable aerial sequences without VFX

Top Gun: Maverick is on pace to become one of the biggest hits and crowd pleasers of the year. In addition to the all-star cast, increasingly impressive box office numbers and the first A+ CinemaScore of 2022, the sequel is wowing audiences (and aviation experts ) with its jaw-dropping flight sequences, most of which were performed and filmed with almost no CGI or VFX. How the heck did they pull it off? Were the actors really trained to fly fighter jets? What kind of camera is used to capture objects flying at Mach speed?

PEOPLE reached out to the film's aerial coordinator Kevin LaRosa II to find out the answers and what it takes to become a stunt pilot and aerial coordinator in charge of creating fictional but realistic aerial sequences.

Read on for detailed, expert explanations from LaRosa II, a third generation pilot and second generation stunt pilot of planes and helicopters, who is also a proud girl dad and hair-braiding ace.

Talk to us about the actual flying everyone did in the film. What kind of work are the actors doing in the planes?

LaRosa II : At this point we all know the cast is always in the backseat of these F/A-18s and that's sort of a Top Gun rule. We always had these Top Gun: Maverick rules: We could never shoot blank sky, which is done in a lot of movies, where they shoot what's called a plate. That wasn't allowed. We always had to shoot another airplane so that when you and I watched the movie, it looks real. It looks real because there's an airplane really behind the lens. If there was an aircraft that's maybe not readily available or not flying in the world, still, not allowed to shoot blank sky. There has to be another airplane there and then VFX would do some amazing things and just re-skin it so you're using the same textures and the same light.

And then when guys like me watch it, I can't even tell that it's not that airplane. And that's because there's a subject aircraft really flying behind the lens that may be re-skinned or re-textured, but it's really there, so it makes a difference. And again, back to the cast in the aircraft, that's a Top Gun: Maverick rule, an aerial rule. There always had to be performing in an aircraft. When you see them flying low over terrain, in between valleys, dog fighting, that's really our cast. They're really in there experiencing all that while delivering an amazing performance.

Tom Cruise has talked about the flight training everyone went through. How long does it take for an average person to adjust to G-force and not feel sick? Is it something you can acclimate to?

LaRosa II : I like to attribute it to something similar to muscle memory. So it's a tolerance that you build up. And that's what Paramount and Tom Cruise made with this pilot training program, to acclimate them and build up the G-tolerance and build up their fatigue levels, so that once the cast were in the F/A-18s, they can experience it better. Had we not done that, I don't think it would've been possible. Even me, if I don't fly all the time, if I'm not pulling Gs or maneuvering, and I get in aircraft and just go rip around, I'll make myself sick. But you build up to it, you become proficient, and your inner ear knows what's going on, your brain understands it more, your body understands the physiological effects, and you can withstand it better. And that's why the training was important. So by the time they got in that F/A-18, they were ready.

Also, It's inevitable. What they're doing out there was heavy duty. Somebody's going to get sick. And people got sick. But when you're that experienced and trained as they were, you kind of learn to power through it in a way. So I would say the average person, if you got air sick, you're kind of done. You might be done for two days. You're just out for the count. You feel horrible. You need to lay down, you're washed out, you're done. Our cast got to a level of proficiency where if they did start feeling sick, they would process it, handle it, whatever you want to say, but then they would get back into it. There's no pulling over on the side of the road when you're in a 50,000 pound F/A-18 doing 500 knots in a canyon. You're in it. So I guess one of the things I'm most proud about isn't the fact that they built up their tolerance, it's the fact that they would muscle through and get themselves back on point. That's no easy task for anybody and they did it when they needed to do it.

What is a typical shooting day like?

LaRosa II : A normal shooting day always starts before the sun comes up. You're never going to sleep in in this trade, because we want that pretty light, right? [Director of photography] Claudio Miranda, you watch Top Gun: Maverick and the movie's just very cinematic, golden, beautiful. Well, we have to wake up early to go get that. So we get up early, we go to the airport, we get our aircraft ready, all of our aircraft: the Navy aircraft, the civilian aircraft. We give everything a lot of TLC. All of our equipment is meticulously cleaned and maintained every single day. We get ourselves ready.

Being ready to fly isn't just about being prepped with the mission. It's about being physically prepped. Are we rested? Have we had our food for the day? Do we feel mentally ready? Do we have external stressors that are going to keep us from being the best we can be? So you've got to be physically and mentally sharp, and then we do these incredible briefings. And in Top Gun: Maverick we would brief our cast, and Tom [Cruise] and [director] Joe Kosinski were just amazing at helping the cast be an extension of themselves in the cockpit where they couldn't be with them. So we'd go through these awesome creative briefs, and then we would get into the logistics of the briefs. How are we going to go get those shots? And we would finally end with the safety and operational risk management and mitigation, and then we'd walk and they'd go to their parachute, or the PR shop it's called, and they'd get their helmets and their wardrobe and all their flight gear. And then they'd finally walk to the aircraft and they'd go do a mission. We call them sortings, so that's the first bit of the day.

Then we come back from those flights and we debrief. Debriefs are equally as important because we watch the footage and Joe would watch every second of cockpit footage and every second of aerial content that myself and the aerial DP would shoot, and we would critique it, and we'd make it better, and we would learn, and we'd find stuff that was the little 1% gold that would make the movie. So that's the first half of the day. And then you would do that all over again in the second half of the day when the light gets low again, so you essentially fly twice a day. It makes for a long day. It's exhausting and extremely rewarding, but that would be a typical day on set of flying on Top Gun: Maverick .

You helped create a new kind of jet and camera combo for this film, the CineJet . What exactly is it? LaRosa II : Years before this movie came to fruition, I knew we would need better technology to help tell the story and give the audience that thrill ride. So I went to the drawing boards and was trying to figure out what jet platform I could use and what camera gimbals were available to fly in a jet. There wasn't really much out there. So where I landed was on a jet called a L-39 Albatros. It's Czechoslovakian-built and imported into the U.S. as a sport airplane, if you will. So it's readily available and maneuverable and it gave me a lot of attributes that I needed in an aircraft to be able to film with. And then we partnered with a company called Shotover and Helinet Aviation , and they have this amazing gimbal called an F1 that was built for helicopters, but we wanted to put it on jets. So they had to modify it and wind tunnel test it and make the thing capable of doing what we wanted it to do. And we went through this big certification and test phase on this airplane. A year and a half later, after drawing my own concept art using MS Paint, that thing was sitting on a ramp, nice and shiny, tested and ready to go.

My role on the movie evolved very early on. Originally I was just the camera jet pilot. And then as the producers and Tom and everybody saw my abilities and my relationship with the Navy, my helicopter flying abilities and everything, I evolved into being the aerial coordinator of the whole movie. So it was an absolute dream come true.

So you created the CineJet for this movie, now what? Are you using it for other projects?

LaRosa II : I actually just did another job with the CineJet last week. It was purposely built for Maverick and then after that, Glen Powell, who's a dear friend of mine, we signed on for another aviation Navy movie called Devotion . The trailer just dropped the other day, and the CineJet did all the air-to-air flying on that as well. I never knew it would have that career after Maverick . But recently it's been doing other work. We've been putting it to use in private jet shoots and some other really neat things, so it served its purpose for what it was to be built for and it's still enjoying a nice little life of aerial cinematography.

What's been the most fun Maverick feedback you've received from other pilots?

LaRosa II : It's been very fun for me. After a lot of the early screenings, I was getting blown up by a lot of pilots and a lot of Naval aviators who are thanking me. And really when they thank me, inside, internally, I thank the crew and Paramount and Joe and Tom. It's a testament to everything we wanted to make and realistically so. And they say, "Kevin the flying sequences in this movie are everything I hoped they would be." And a lot of them, my favorites are the ones that say, "I joined the armed forces because of the first movie. And this movie would make me do it all over again," or that it sets the bar even higher. So that means a lot. That's pretty resounding to me to hear things like that from those folks.

What's your first memory of flight and flying?

LaRosa II : My first memory of flying is sitting on my mom's lap in a helicopter. I must have been just a kid, a baby almost. And I remember going on a night flight with my dad [who is also a pilot and aerial coordinator] in downtown Los Angeles on a perfectly clear night and just the smell of the helicopter and the jet fuel. It probably wasn't my first ride because I'd been flying with them since I was a baby, but it's definitely the first one I visually remember, falling in love with the look and feel and the smells and the sights.

How many years, hours does it take to get where you are?

LaRosa II : There are a lot of variables. To do what I do, you have to mesh two different loves. I have a love for cinema, making movies, and I have a love for aviation. And I think to be the perfect aerial coordinator... Well, nobody's perfect. To be a really good aerial coordinator, you have to understand both. And you have to have a really good foundation in both. I was lucky enough to grow up with a dad who worked on movie sets all the time as a stunt pilot. And, of course, I grew up flying so my whole life has culminated with a lot of really unique experiences to put me in this position to do what I do today.

Every aviation trade has its own set of parameters and skill sets. There are many aviation trades that I'm not good at or experienced or proficient in. But, what it takes to do what we do is an understanding of camera and also [the ability] to take on giant responsibility. If you take Top Gun: Maverick , for example, Paramount entrusted me as their aerial coordinator to make sure that everybody landed every day safely, and that all these aircraft could go back into service after every flight, and to make sure that we didn't break any FAA rules. We don't really think about that, but my job on the backside, I'm working with the FAA every day to make sure I'm obtaining permissions and waivers. And obviously, working with the Navy. And my counterpart on the Navy side was Captain Brian Ferguson, call sign Ferg. I worked with him every day to make sure that we had the right assets and we were doing things safely and mitigating risks.

So to do what I do isn't just cranking and banking around in the sky. That's the glamorous, fun stuff, but it is a lot of paperwork. It's a lot of responsibility. It's a lot of meetings. It's a lot of briefing and debriefing. And luckily, I love all of it. Because all that hard work we do on the ground pays off when we go fly.

What's your schedule like and how are you booked? Because you fly planes and helicopters, can you do two jobs at once?

LaRosa II : One of the most fun things for me is when I go on a movie as an aerial coordinator and I'm in charge of any given aerial sequence and the producers and directors say, "Kev, you just choose the platform that's going to make this correct. Make it right, make it safe, and make it awesome." And that's fun for me because then I go to work. There's times where I will fly a jet in the morning, hop out of the jet, run across the ramp, get in the helicopter, and go fly the helicopter for the same sequence. And what I love about that is there's continuity. If I'm shooting something for a certain director and there's a style that I'm shooting in, that style is going to come right out of the jet and hop right into the helicopter -- the same aerial DP, same pilot getting in that other platform. And that's really fun for me.

I love that I can fly both. People ask me all the time, "What's your favorite?" My answer is simple. I would not want to give up any one of them. It's too cool to be able to fly both platforms. They do something completely different. My typical way that I get booked is, sometimes it's as simple as, "Hey, I just need a shot of downtown," and I'll go fly a camera helicopter and I'll be a camera pilot. And sometimes I get hired to be the aerial coordinator and I'm put on retainer for an entire movie. And that's my favorite thing to do, because there's a whole creative side and I get to help them turn storyboards into reality. I'm an independent contractor. I go from job to job, studio to studio, movie to movie and we fill in the gaps with a lot of really fun TV show flying as well.

What to you is the most impressive aerial cinematic sequence that you have not been involved in?

LaRosa II : Oh man. There are a few of them for sure. I've got to tip my hat to some of my competition, Craig Hosking was the aerial coordinator on Dunkirk and there was really amazing aerial cinematography in that movie. I love watching that. My dad, of course, and maybe there's bias there, but he did this one stunt sequence in a movie called The Last Castle with Robert Redford. It doesn't print as well on camera as it would if you were standing there in person, but he flew this military UH-1H Huey in the courtyard of that castle, around the flagpole while getting shot with multiple water hoses, and a stunt guy hanging underneath. The tolerances for how close he was to those buildings with the rotor blades were mere feet. And he did it over and over and over again with this excellence in repetition that I've just never seen before. This is probably some of the wildest, coolest flying I've ever seen. So a tip of the hat to my dad there, that was pretty intense.

Outside of what seems like a dream job, what is the most normal thing you do daily?

LaRosa II : I am actually really good at braiding my daughters' hair. When I'm not doing these wild Hollywood stunts, I'm a proud, happy dad of three little girls: Ella, 3, Emma, 8, and Ava, 10. Braiding is a requirement if you're going to be a girl dad, by the way. It's less about aesthetics and more of a cheat. They look super cute with braided hair, but it's a cheat because I don't want to brush out knotty hair in the morning. It's miserable. The most stressful thing I have ever done is brush out my little girls' hair because it hurts. That kills me. But if you braid their hair at nighttime, you have smooth hair in the morning. It just saves you. I'm also really good at cooking breakfast. I love making omelets and hash browns.

Have your daughters flown with you yet? LaRosa II : Absolutely. We are an aviation family, so I own a little sport aerobatic airplane and my little girls fly in that thing. I mean the little one is a little small, she's been in helicopters. But the bigger girls, Emma and Ava, they can fly that thing. They can just barely land it. If they should want to learn and be Hollywood's next major stunt pilot, I will be their biggest supporter and advocate.

Top Gun: Maverick is now in theaters.

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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

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By Abe Beame

By Mitch Moxley

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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Tom Cruise just performed his most dangerous stunt yet – riding a motorcycle off a cliff and BASE jumping

By Caitlin O'Kane

December 21, 2022 / 10:00 AM EST / CBS News

Tom Cruise has performed another daring stunt for the "Mission: Impossible" film series. 

He called this one the most dangerous thing he's ever attempted. Shot in Norway, the stunt required Cruise to ride a motorcycle off a cliff and BASE jump — something he said he's wanted to do since he was a kid. 

Cruise, 60, is currently working on the two-part "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning" film. He's known for performing his own stunts, but this one took years to plan, he said in a video shared on Twitter. 

So excited to share what we’ve been working on. #MissionImpossible pic.twitter.com/rIyiLzQdMG — Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) December 19, 2022

In the video, writer and director Christopher McQuarrie said Cruise put together a "master plan" using experts to help execute the stunt.

He had a year of sky diving training, during which he was doing 30 jumps a day – more than 500 skydives, said Wade Eastwood, the film's stunt coordinator. He also had motocross training, doing over 13,000 motocross jumps. Once he got those skills down, the production team created 3D models to try and predict how Cruise would fly through the air during the stunt so they could film it.

Then, it came time for Cruise to execute the stunt — driving a motorcycle up a long ramp, which lead to a cliff, launching off of it and BASE jumping to the bottom. Cruise first jumped out of a helicopter over the cliff to practice, before attempting the full stunt for the cameras.

"The only things you have to avoid while doing a stunt like this are serious injury or death," BASE jumping coach Miles Daisher said. "You're riding a motorcycle, which is pretty dangerous, on top of a ramp that's elevated off the ground, so if you fall off the ramp, that's pretty bad. You're falling, so if you don't get a clean exit from the bike and you get tangled up with it, or if you don't open your parachute, you're not going to make it."

The behind-the-scenes video show Cruise not only execute the stunt once, but six times in one day. 

"Pretty much the biggest stunt in cinematic history," said BASE jumping coach John DeVore. Viewers can see the final product when part one of the film premieres July 2023. The "Mission: Impossible" series is from Paramount Pictures. (Paramount is also the parent company of CBS.)

Cruise has performed countless hair-raising stunts, including jumping off of scaffolding while filming "Mission: Impossible 6" in —  a stunt that left him injured and limping. 

Cruise has been in Europe filming the seventh and eight "Mission: Impossible" films for several years. The seventh movie was scheduled to premiere in November 2021, but the COVD-19 pandemic shut down production and was pushed to May 27, 2022,  according to Variety . The date was pushed several time after that, and the film will now premier next year. 

While shooting in the U.K. last year, Cruise, who was traveling by helicopter, needed a place to land,  BBC News reports.  He ended up landing in a family's backyard, and then let their kids go for a ride in the helicopter, making headlines.

Caitlin O'Kane is a New York City journalist who works on the CBS News social media team as a senior manager of content and production. She writes about a variety of topics and produces "The Uplift," CBS News' streaming show that focuses on good news.

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