During a May 14 Masterclass at the Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie had attendees on the edge of their seats just recounting how they achieved one of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’s most breathtaking action sequences.
The scene features Tom Cruise crawling along the wings of a 1940s biplane zooming above South Africa’s Drakensberg Mountain range.
“There was a moment when Tom had pushed himself to the point that he was so physically exhausted he couldn’t get back up off the wing,” said McQuarrie, who has worked with Cruise on 11 films, including four in the Mission: Impossible franchise. “He was lying on the wing of the plane. Arms are hanging over the front of the wing.”
With three minutes’ worth of fuel left in the plane’s tank, “we watched as Tom pulled himself up and stuck his head in the cockpit so that he could replenish the oxygen in his body and then climb up into the cockpit and bring the plane safely down to land,” McQuarrie continued. “No-one on earth can do that.”
For Cruise, it’s all just a day in the office. “I don’t mind encountering the unknown, and I like the feeling. It’s just an emotion for me,” he told the audience of facing his fears. “It’s something that is not paralysing. People can be quite frightened about the unknown, and I never have been.”
The budget of the new M:I film is said to have been around $620 million – one of the most expensive movies of all time. Insurance for Cruise to perform his own stunts has been estimated to cost north of $15 million.
Starting with director Brian De Palma’s original 1996 adaptation of the 1960s TV spy series, Cruise, 62, has upped the ante with each M:I film, from free-climbing in Utah and scaling Dubai’s Burj Khalifa skyscraper to riding a motorcycle off the edge of a cliff and clinging onto a giant A400M aircraft during take-off.
But even after eight rounds of playing Ethan Hunt, the star says there’s always more to learn. “I’m learning these skills and then I’m applying it to cinema,” he said at the film’s London premiere. “There’s a lot of studying, a lot of learning. I don’t ever coast through anything. I want the challenge.”
Stunt work aside, Cruise says he’s constantly working on himself, but is always somewhat in movie-star mode. “I will learn a skill, and I know eventually I’m going to use it in a movie,” he told People magazine. “Whether it’s the piano or having more time to dance. Or parachuting, or flying aeroplanes, or helicopters … I love making movies. It’s not what I do. It’s who I am.”
Acting became a lifeline for Cruise after he struggled in school with dyslexia and had a hard time after his parents divorced when he was 12. “I’ve had such extremes in my life. From being this kind of wild kid, to one year studying to be a Franciscan priest at the seminary … I was very frustrated,” he told Interview in 1986, three years after sliding into the spotlight – in his underwear – with his role in Risky Business (1983). “I had a lot of energy and I couldn’t stick to one thing. I feel good about the fact that I finally found something I love.”
The actor leveraged his breakout success with the producers of his next film, Top Gun (1986), to gain more say in the filmmaking process. “I negotiated a deal where they had to allow me into every production meeting and to see every aspect behind the scenes,” he said while receiving a British Film Institute Fellowship on May 12. “This is when I started to get more creative control.”
More critical acclaim came with his roles in dramas like Rain Man (1988), Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and A Few Good Men (1992), before Cruise turned up the action in movies like Minority Report (2002) and War of the Worlds (2005).
Cruise’s highest-grossing film to date was post-pandemic blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick (2022), which pulled in $2.3 billion at the worldwide box office. “You saved Hollywood’s ass, and you might have saved theatrical distribution,” director Steven Spielberg was filmed telling Cruise at the 2023 Academy Luncheon.
The actor’s personal life has also drawn focus over the years. In May 1987, he wed actress Mimi Rogers, and during their time together he joined the Church of Scientology, becoming one of the controversial religion’s most influential members.
The year Cruise divorced Rogers, he met Nicole Kidman on the set of Days of Thunder and after a whirlwind romance, they tied the knot in a private ceremony in Telluride, Colorado, on Christmas Eve, 1990. The couple were together for 11 years, and during their marriage, they adopted two children, Isabella, 32, and Connor, 30, until Cruise filed for divorce citing “irreconcilable differences” in February 2001.
Within months, Cruise started dating his Vanilla Sky co-star Penélope Cruz. After they split in 2004, he began his PDA-packed relationship with Katie Holmes, and in April 2006, “TomKat”, as the press dubbed them, welcomed daughter Suri, now 19, and married in Italy seven months later. After six years, Holmes filed for divorce, reportedly blindsiding Cruise, who has kept his private life relatively lowkey ever since.
In February, Cruise sparked rumours of a romance with actress Ana de Armas when the pair were seen out to dinner in London. The next month, they were snapped landing at a London heliport, and a day later, on de Armas’ 37th birthday, the duo were spotted strolling through a London park. While promoting her upcoming movie Ballerina on Good Morning America on May 16, de Armas was asked about her relationship with Cruise
. “It’s so much fun. We’re definitely working on a lot of things,” she demurred. “Not just one, but a few projects with Doug Liman and Christopher McQuarrie and, of course, Tom. And I’m so excited.”
Neither Cruise nor McQuarrie would confirm or deny if the M:I franchise is officially finished with The Last Reckoning, although Cruise has repeatedly called this latest instalment a “culmination of three decades of work”.
Speaking on the red carpet of the film’s New York premiere on May 18, he said he wouldn’t change a thing about the franchise so far. “I did the best you can, and it’s representing all the efforts of everyone involved at that particular moment,” he told reporters. “I looked at it and I really see what it takes to make these movies and what I’ve learned about storytelling [in] this particular genre.”
In an interview with Australia’s Today, Cruise teased that the third Top Gun film and a second Days of Thunder movie are now in his sights. “It took me 35 years to figure out Top Gun: Maverick, so all of these things we’re working on, we’re discussing [sequels to] Days of Thunder and Top Gun: Maverick,” he told Richard Wilkins. “There are numerous other films that we’re actively working on right now. I’m always shooting a film, prepping a film, posting a film.”
