Tom Cruise’s action legacy is tied as much to physical risk as box office success. Across decades of films, the actor has repeatedly insisted on doing demanding stunt work himself, from underwater sequences to cliff jumps and airplane hangs. According to Hollywood Reporter, that pattern stretches back to the earliest days of the Mission: Impossible series and well beyond it. The result is a film career filled with near misses, painful injuries, and ambitious set pieces that became central to the appeal of his biggest movies.
Tom Cruise Ran From an Exploding Aquarium
One of the earliest examples came in 1996, when Cruise filmed a major aquarium blast for the first Mission: Impossible. In the sequence, Ethan Hunt triggers an explosion that sends a wall of water crashing behind him as he runs. Cruise reportedly performed the scene without a stunt double. The danger did not stop there. In Mission: Impossible II, directed by John Woo, he scaled and hung from giant rocks on a cliff face with only a safety cable in place. Those scenes helped establish a template Cruise would keep following for years.
Top Gun and The Last Samurai Brought Close Calls
Cruise’s appetite for on-set danger was already visible during Top Gun. During the water sequence after Maverick and Goose eject from their jet, Barry Tubb said Cruise nearly drowned when his parachute filled with water and pulled him under. The risks around that production were broader too, with a veteran fighter pilot reportedly dying while filming aerial footage. Years later, The Last Samurai brought another alarming moment. "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," Hiroyuki Sanada told Daily Mail.
Collateral to Rogue Nation Raised the Stakes
The close calls kept coming in the 2000s and 2010s. While shooting Collateral, Jamie Foxx said he crashed a cab head-on into Cruise’s Mercedes during a chase scene, sending the vehicle off the set. Cruise later said he was thrown around inside the car. On Edge of Tomorrow, Emily Blunt recalled driving into a tree with Cruise in the passenger seat. Then came one of his most talked-about aerial feats in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, where he clung to the outside of an Airbus as it took off and later trained to hold his breath underwater for six minutes.
Fallout and Dead Reckoning Pushed Him Even Further
Cruise’s commitment came with a documented injury on Mission: Impossible – Fallout, when he broke his ankle during a building jump and shut down production for six weeks. Even that did not slow the scale of his later work. In Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, he trained in speed-flying and rode a motorbike off a cliff before parachuting to safety, a stunt years in the making. The latest chapter added another brutal test, with Cruise hanging from an upside-down plane in The Final Reckoning, a sequence described as physically punishing and difficult even to breathe through.
