Mission: Impossible 2 - The One Stunt Tom Cruise Begged Director John Woo To Do
Tom Cruise's much-publicized stunt of driving a motorcycle off a cliff in the upcoming "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1" had fans losing their minds. Of course, the death-defying leap of faith — where he opens a parachute as he lets the cycle falls to the earth below — isn't the first time the adrenaline-fueled actor made director Christopher McQuarrie lose sleep. The "Dead Reckoning" stunt was preceded by a HALO jump in 2018's "Mission: Impossible – Fallout," and a stunt hanging outside a door of a cargo plane in "Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation" in 2015.
Cruise obviously doesn't have a fear of heights, which director John Woo discovered firsthand at the helm of the 2000 blockbuster "Mission: Impossible II." In a 2022 interview with Letterboxd about his filmmaking career, Woo revealed the terror he felt as Cruise performed the film's marquee stunt to open the film.
"I think the most dangerous and scary moment was when we were shooting 'Mission: Impossible II,' and Tom Cruise climbed 2,000 feet up a cliff by himself," Woo recalled for the publication. "And he didn't allow me to use any stunt doubles to do it. He wanted to do all of the action by himself. It was insane!"
Cruise begged Woo to do the rock-climbing scene
Without question, Tom Cruise is Hollywood's last great action star, and he has rightfully earned that reputation through his persistence in performing all of his own stunts to entertain his audiences no matter the risks involved. John Woo learned of Cruise's persistence during the production of "Mission: Impossible II," when the actor wouldn't take no for an answer from the director when it came to tackling the cliff-climbing scene.
"The first time [he asked] I refused, because I was angry and worried. But he was begging me to do it," Woo told Letterboxd. "I was so scared, I couldn't even bear to watch the monitor. But we set it all up, and he's climbing up there by himself, and I'm sitting there praying, 'Jesus, please don't let anything happen.' He had no protection, so it was very scary, very dangerous. But the scene turned out really great."
With so much at stake, Woo admitted to Letterboxd that word surrounding the cliff-climbing stunt was initially kept private: "I didn't let the studio know about it. Or the insurance company!"
At least studios and insurance companies can take comfort in knowing that Cruise extensively prepares for his stunts. In fact, Cruise jumped out of a plane over 500 times for his Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning training to do his motorcycle cliff scene.