The mind-blowing stunt Tom Cruise performed with a broken ankle
There is nobody with a reputation quite like Tom Cruise, with the actor coming across as surprisingly likeable even in spite of all the objectively odd things he has said and done throughout his career.
Through his indescribable charisma, star quality and passion for cinema, the actor is widely known as one of the most influential people in the business, continuously showcasing his love for the medium through his daring commitment and unwavering approach to selecting risky and varied projects. After his breakthrough role in Risky Business, the actor shortly rose to success through subsequent roles in Top Gun and The Colour of Money.
From his very first streak of films, Cruise proved himself to be hungry for the challenge of every role under the sun, leading him to forge a reputation based on this quality and his desire to put everything on the line for an authentic performance, resorting to new extremes to embody his characters and meet the demands of the story, with one instance in which he pushed himself to the max for a stunt despite having a broken ankle at the time.
Cruise’s filmography is overflowing with choices and versatility, with the actor starring in courtroom dramas like A Few Good Men, psycho-sexual thrillers like Eyes Wide Shut and of course, the infamous spy franchise, Mission: Impossible. While he built his career through independent dramas and gnarly stories, working with the likes of Oliver Stone and Paul Thomas Anderson, he later tried his hand at a different genre and found that he was pretty damn good at it.
The action sequences in the Mission: Impossible series are renowned in the world of cinema, with fans flocking to the cinema each time a new one is released in order to witness the pure insanity of Cruise’s stunt work, leading him to jump from increasingly high places and cling onto planes as his character embarks on another mission.
However, while the actor had many hairy moments while playing Ethan Hunt, one seriously injured him. But as the saying goes, the show must go on, and this injury did not deter Cruise from completing the stunt.
During the production of Mission: Impossible – Fallout in 2018, the actor had an accident while filming the rooftop chase scene in London, saying, “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. 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.”
While the production was briefly shut down, the actor continued shooting while his ankle was still broken, with footage of the accident being shared online and showing the exact moment that his foot slams against a wall while running off a building. It’s a gnarly business, and while many would give up and return to shooting when they were fully recovered, it’s simply not Cruise’s style to do so.
