Tom Cruise Refused to Tell His Family About This Dangerous ‘Mission Impossible’ Stunt

Tom Cruise once revealed how one of his family members reacted to one of his most dangerous stunts in ‘Mission Impossible’.
Tom Cruise is known for going above and beyond when it comes to film stunts. But there was one stunt so dangerous that the action star refused to even tell his family about it.
Tom Cruise revealed the 1 film stunt he didn’t want to tell his family about
Tom Cruise | Theo Wargo/Getty Images
Cruise has always preferred to do his own stunts if he could get away with. And even in his older years, he’s shown no signs of slowing down. The actor is 61 years old, and is still seen doing the same death-defying sequences that he did in his much younger years. Many of his friends, family, and colleagues are usually well-aware that Cruise might put himself in harm’s way for the sake of his films. But there was one action sequence Cruise felt he needed to be tight-lipped about.
According to Contact Music, the action scene in question happened in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. There, Cruise would jump on a cargo plane that was taking off. The scene was so harrowing that he decided to keep it a secret from his loved ones.
“I did not tell my family, I did not tell anyone,” Cruise said.
It seemed Cruise was right to keep it a secret. Later on, his mother would see a cut of the film, and freaked out at the stunt.
“We had some cut footage, and I showed her that and she was like… ‘Oh my Lord! Oh Lordy! Oh sweet Jesus… Tom, is that you, is that you? Oh my Lord… I’m so glad you didn’t tell me about this one,’” Cruise remembered.
The stunt was also a rare moment where Cruise worried he might’ve gone too far.
“I was going down the runway, I was like, ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea… Oh s***, Oh s***!’ There were so many things that could potentially go wrong,” he said.
Tom Cruise’s ‘Mission Impossible’ co-star said they always worry about something going wrong
Just because Cruise is used to doing these kind of stunts, doesn’t mean they don’t frighten him. But the actor asserted that the fear is something else that he enjoys about putting himself in danger.
“I just don’t mind it,” Cruise once told CNN. “I don’t mind that feeling, I kind of like that feeling. You prepare for something, and you’re like, ‘What’s gonna happen?’ I don’t mind that feeling.”
However, his Mission Impossible co-stars like Simon Pegg are always a bit on edge when Cruise pushes his limits.
“There’s always a sense that, you know, one day, something might go wrong, we might lose Tom, you know,” Pegg said in an interview with IGN. “Anytime there’s a big stunt, we all have that sense of, you know, fear, but he always pulls it off.”
Tom Cruise did his famous motorcycle ‘Mission Impossible’ stunt the first day just in case something went wrong
Cruise performed another one of his most daring stunts in his latest film Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One. The scene, which also appeared in trailers, showed Cruise riding off of a cliff on a motorcycle. It was a very meticulous scene that required a lot of moving parts to do right. But Cruise knew he and the team were more than ready to nail the take on the day it was shot.
“I was training and I was ready,” Cruise told Entertainment Tonight. “You have to be razor sharp when you’re doing something like that. It was very important as we were prepping the film that it was actually the first thing. I don’t want to drop that and go shoot other things and have my mind somewhere else. Everyone was prepped. Let’s just get it done.”
But Cruise confided there was always the small possibility that something could go wrong. And if an accident did happen, Cruise felt it was better to get it out of the way in the beginning of production.
“Well we know either we’re going continue with the film or we’re not. Let’s know day one,” Cruise said. “Let’s know day one, what is going to happen? Do we all continue, or is it a major rewrite?”