Throughout all of his movies, Tom Cruise's stunts have become something he is known for, and for the last 27 years, these wild stunts have made the Mission: Impossible franchise distinguishable from other films in the spy genre, earning over $4.09 billion worldwide.
The franchise has churned out a total of seven films with the eighth installment set for 2025 and despite being in his 60s, Tom Cruise is showing no signs of slowing down. The first Mission Impossible film established Cruise as an action star and cemented his reputation for doing his own stunts—but that was all the way back in 1996, when the actor was much younger. Ever wondered how old Tom Cruise was at the time when he performed his most dangerous stunts from all of his movies, not just Mission Impossible?
11 Top Gun: 'Parachute Scene'
Tom Cruise's Age During Stunt: 24 Years Old
- Year Film Was Released: 1986
Top Gun‘s Barry Tubb (who played “Wolfman,” in the film) 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.” In the aftermath of the on-screen accident, pilot Maverick (Cruise) cradles Goose’s body in the ocean, waiting for rescue. But while shooting the scene, Cruise didn’t know that his parachute had begun filling with water.
“They were refilling the camera or something, and luckily one of the frogmen in the chopper saw his chute ballooning out,” says Tubb. “He jumped in and cut Cruise loose right before he sank. They would have never found him. He would have been at the bottom of the ocean.”
While Cruise ended up being okay, the same could not be said for veteran aviator and aerial cameraman, Art Scholl, who unfortunately died while shooting aerial footage for the movie.
10 Mission: Impossible: 'Aquarium Scene'
Tom Cruise's Age During Stunt: 34 Years Old
- Year of Film Release: 1996
Ever see someone out run a tsunami? Well, Tom Cruise sort of did in the first installment of Mission: Impossible. In the 1996 film, Cruise reportedly never swapped out for a stuntman in one particular scene involving an aquarium. In the scene, his character Ethan 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.
Talking to Graham Norton in 2017, Cruise admitted that the stunt was indeed “very crazy. The actor also 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. The combination between the detonation, glass and gallons of water were enough to seriously injure Cruise had there been the slightest bit of miscommunication between him and the stunt coordinator.
9 Mission: Impossible 2: 'Rock Climbing Scene'
Tom Cruise's Age During Stunt: 38 Years Old
- Year Film Was Released: 2000
Tom Cruise's dangerous stunts streak continued with the opening scene of Mission: Impossible 2 by climbing a 2,000-foot cliff. Cruise scaled the cliff in Utah with nothing but a safety rope. "The scary thing was, the cliff was 2,000 feet high, and there were no protections on the ground," director John Woo explained in a behind-the-scenes featurette. "I was sweating and in a panic."
"I was really mad that he wanted to do it, but I tried to stop him and I couldn't," Woo said. "I was so scared I was sweating. I couldn't even watch the monitor when we shot it."
According to Entertainment Weekly, Cruise only wore a thin safety cable, and getting the scene took seven takes. "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 EW. But Tom would say, 'I'm okay, John, don't worry, I want to do it one more time."
8 The Last Samurai: 'Samurai Sword Scene'
Tom Cruise's Age During Stunt: 41 Years Old
- Year Film Was Released: 2003
Why opt for a mock sword when you could film with a real one like Tom Cruise did in the 2003 epic period action film The Last Samurai. In typical fashion, Tom Cruise's stunts were performed by himself. Many of the scenes went as planned, but the one involving swords and riding mechanical horses almost left him beheaded. 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.
Well, Sanada's mechanical horse was a tad untamed and didn't stop as planned, 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. The film crew watching from the side all screamed because they thought Tom’s head would fly off.” Sanada told Loopers of the incident.
7 Collateral: 'Car Crash Scene'
Tom Cruise's Age During Stunt: 42 Years Old
- Year Film Was Released: 2004
For once, in the film Collateral, Tom Cruise wasn't steering the wheel of in the direction of potential danger. This time, It was Jamie Foxx who was literally been behind the wheel when an incident during an action scene left Cruise—and his Mercedes-Benz— a tad shaken up, to say the least. 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,” Cruise said. “I was down on the ground.”
Apparently, when the incident occurred, production only cared about Cruise's well-being. Jamie Foxx appeared on The Graham Norton Show, where he explained the backstory, "What happens is, the car gets out of control and I actually do crash into the car. And when they get there, they’re like ‘Jamie, get out of the way, Tom! Are you ok?' And that’s where you know where you are.".
6 Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol: 'Scaling A Skyscraper Scene'
Tom Cruise's Age During Stunt: 49 Years Old
- Year Film Was Released: 2011
As if the mountain during Mission: Impossible 2 wasn't high enough, in Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, Tom Cruise upped the ante by scaling Dubai’s 163-floor Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. 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.
Stunt coordinator, Gregg Smrz, was Initially skeptical that the building's owner would let them turn the 2,722-foot skyscraper into a movie set, the crew recreated three floors of the Burj on a soundstage in Prague. "We built an adjustable wall, slowly raised it until it was vertical and practiced for 200 hours on it with a crew of seven or eight guys. But Tom kept saying, 'I really want to climb that building," Smrz recalled.
Initially production had planned to shoot for a single scene on the exterior of the building, and the rest of the sequence would be shot on another 60-foot adjustable wall that has been constructed in the desert outside of Dubai. That was until Cruise, of course, changed the course of production with a single sentence.
"The first day [on the Burj] went so well that Tom said, 'We're filming the whole thing here on the real building.' We ended up doing one day of shooting over on the set, and the rest of it was on the real building."
It was revealed that filmmakers originally planned to make the film Cruise’s final film as Ethan Hunt, but Cruise refused to allow that to happen despite his age. “There was a point in the script when he’s fighting Michael Nyqvist where he was supposed to get his leg broken,” Smrz said. “They wanted it hyper-extended at the knee, just shredded — end of career, you know? The studio was going to write him out, and Tom did not want it. He was strapping in his harness, looked at me, and said, ‘I ain’t going nowhere.’ Then he walked out on set and did his thing. We had [the leg break] all set and ready to go, and it disappeared.”
5 Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation: 'Plane Scene'
Tom Cruise's Age During Stunt: 53 Years Old
- Year Film Was Released: 2015
Tom Cruise's dangerous stunts decided to get a tad more airborne in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation. 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 how they made Tom Cruise's stunt 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.”
4 Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation: 'Underwater Breathing Scene'
Tom Cruise's Age During Stunt: 53 Years Old
- Year Film Was Released: 2015
In Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, Tom Cruise's dangerous stunt was death-defying and expanded his horizons, but he decided to expand his lung capacity simultaneously for a scene 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. Holding one's breath for that long underwater can cause serious brain damage—even for professional divers— who hold their breath for anywhere between four and seven minutes.
But what's a little risk for Tom Cruise? Although Cruise scared crew members 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.”.
3 Mission: Impossible – Fallout: 'Building Jump Scene'
Tom Cruise's Age During Stunt: 56 Years Old
- Year Film Was Released: 2018
What could possibly go wrong when Tom Cruise jumps from the top of one building to another? Well, it seemed that just about everything went wrong for the actor while filming a building jump scene in 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout. The Tom Cruise stunt actually resulted in the actor getting 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.
“I was chasing Henry and was meant to hit the side of the wall and pull myself over but the mistake was my foot hitting the wall,” he explained. “I knew instantly my ankle was broken and I really didn’t want to do it again so just got up and carried on with the take. I said, ‘It’s broken. That’s a wrap. Take me to hospital’ and then everyone got on the phone and made their vacation arrangement.”
2 Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (Part One): 'Speed-Flying Scene'
Tom Cruise's Age During Stunt: 61 Years Old
- Year Film Was Released: 2023
Each time fans think Tom Cruise's stunts can't get any bigger, the actor delivers. 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.
In a recent video giving a behind-the-scenes look at the movie, the filmmaker explained that since “there are no limits” with Cruise, “we become a little bit more adventurous every time.” And this time, the actor decided to do a “sport very few people on this planet do.”
In the footage, Tom Cruise said of the stunt, “We’re gonna do spirals, and we’re landing at an incredibly high speed, over 80 kilometers an hour.”
McQuarrie added that although it “looks quite beautiful” when “flying very close to rocks,” the crew was in “absolute terror” behind the cameras. Especially since they had to overcome several technical challenges, including coming up with the stunt and finding the most dynastic way to shoot it.
