“Oh Lordy!”: The ‘Mission: Impossible’ stunt Tom Cruise hid from his family
When you are someone who has scaled the outside of the world’s tallest building, hung off the side of a mountain, and held your breath for six and a half minutes underwater, it takes a lot to scare you. Indeed, Tom Cruise never met a stunt he didn’t like the sound of, and if it got his heart racing with fear, then all the better. However, there was one particular stunt that even he realised was too bowel-loosening to tell his family about – and when his mum finally watched the footage with mounting horror, she could scarcely believe her eyes at what her son had lived through.
Over the years, Cruise’s insane dedication to defying death on camera has become a significant selling point of the Mission: Impossible franchise – but he’s actually been doing his own stunts from the beginning of his career. For example, while shooting Goose’s harrowing death scene in the original 1986 Top Gun, he nearly drowned when his parachute filled with water and dragged him beneath the waves. Co-star Barry Tubb once told the New York Post, “Cruise came as close to dying as anybody on a set I’ve ever seen.”
Similarly, Cruise nearly lost his head while shooting a battle scene in 2003’s The Last Samurai. When he and co-star Hiroyuki Sanada rode toward each other on mechanical horses, Cruise’s metal steed was supposed to stop moving before Sanada swung a real samurai sword at his nemesis. Unfortunately, the horse malfunctioned and didn’t stop in time, but Sanada had the wherewithal to pull his swing back before the blade connected with Cruise’s jugular.
The Japanese star told the Daily Mail, “The film crew watching from the side all screamed because they thought Tom’s head would fly off.”
Interestingly, while Cruise has always been open that he is an adrenaline junkie, he’s also been honest when a stunt has scared him. The difference between him and other people, though, is that he doesn’t let the fear stop him, and he enjoys the unknown factor at play. He told CNN, “I just don’t mind it. I don’t mind that feeling; I kind of like that feeling. You prepare for something, and you’re like, ‘What’s gonna happen?'”
Cruise was so perturbed by what could potentially happen during one stunt, though, that he chose to keep it secret. The thrilling opening scene of 2015’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation saw his super spy Ethan Hunt cling to the door of a cargo plane as it took off into the sky – and Cruise did the stunt for real. He admitted, “I did not tell my family. I did not tell anyone.”
Cruise and all the experts on the production knew the stunt was arguably the most dangerous he’d ever attempted because of all the variables they couldn’t control. For example, when he was suspended 5,000 feet in the air, they had no idea if a bird would hit him, and that would be all she wrote. Indeed, Cruise didn’t even quite realise the scale of the danger until he was in the middle of it. He chuckled, “I was going down the runway. I was like, ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Oh shit, oh shit.’ There were so many things that could potentially go wrong.”
Luckily, Cruise made it through the stunt in one piece – but when he showed some hastily assembled footage to his mother, she was aghast. He confessed, “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.'”
In the end, this stunt wasn’t a case of “Mother knows best” – it was “Mother doesn’t need to know anything at all.”
