This Tom Cruise co-star is blown away by his stunts: “I’ve said, ‘You’re absolutely nuts’ many times to him”

Tom Cruise, who is set to serve up yet more stunts that “beggar belief” in the latest Mission: Impossible movie, shows an “absolutely nuts” commitment to performing death-defying sequences.

That’s the assessment of Cruise’s co-star Simon Pegg, who has appeared alongside the Hollywood icon in several instalments of the spy-action film franchise.

Cruise “will literally risk his life”

In the eighth - and potentially last - Mission: Impossible movie, Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt for The Final Reckoning, which is out in cinemas this month.

A sequel to 2023’s Dead Reckoning Part One, the new film sees Hunt and his team at the Impossible Missions Force go up against the “Entity”, an advanced artificial-intelligence system that has gone rogue.

Since the Mission: Impossible movie franchise premiered back in 1996 - and in numerous other films on his resumé - Cruise’s dedication to performing his own stunts has attained legendary status.

Over the past three decades, the actor’s spectacular M:I feats include dangling from the side of a plane, scaling the world’s tallest building, and driving a motorbike off a cliff.

Pegg, who has featured in every M:I film since 2006’s Mission: Impossible III, says Cruise “literally will risk his life for the audience”.

“He just cares that much about it”

Speaking to People magazine this week, the British actor declared: “I’ve said, ‘You’re absolutely nuts’ many times to him. But he just cares that much about it.”

Pegg looked back on Cruise’s vertigo-inducing stunt for 2011’s Ghost Protocol - a sequence in which Hunt can be seen climbing up the outside of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, a skyscraper that measures 2,700ft in height.

“[I remember] just leaning out of the window [of the Burj Khalifa],” Pegg said, “and seeing Tom sort of hanging there, smiling, this big s**t eating grin on his face, like, ‘I’m having the best time.’”

Last month, as he looked ahead to the release of The Final Reckoning, Pegg revealed that Mission: Impossible fans will again be treated to “stunts Tom is doing [that] just beggar belief. I mean, really, really dumb s**t.”

Appearing in a Screen Rant panel discussion at AwesomeCon, Pegg said Cruise’s commitment to pulling off such outrageous stunts is “inspiring to watch”.

The Shaun of the Dead star also stressed that extreme safety measures are taken when the sequences are filmed. “He’s incredibly focused, and he’s incredibly careful when it comes to those stunts,” Pegg said.

But despite the precautions he takes, Cruise has not always escaped significant injury.

While shooting 2018’s Fallout, the 62-year-old broke his ankle during a rooftop chase, leading to a months-long delay to production. (He still managed to complete the scene in question, however).

“When acting, you’re bringing everything”

Discussing his willingness to perform perilous action shots, Cruise told a 2014 interview with the BBC’s Graham Norton (via Parade): “I feel that [when] acting you’re bringing everything, you know, physically and emotionally, to a character in a story.

“And I’m able to do it [stunts], and I’ve trained for 30 years doing things like this that it allows us to put cameras in places where you normally are not able to.”

During a Q&A at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022, Cruise added, per the Hollywood Reporter: “No one asked Gene Kelly, ‘Why do you dance? Why do you do your own dancing?’”

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning: watch the trailer

When is Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning out?

The Final Reckoning is set to have its world premiere at Cannes on Wednesday, May 14, 2025. The film is then due out in movie theaters on Friday, May 23, 2025.

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