| Alyssa Toomey 3. November 2014 – 10:27
Mission: Impossible? Apparently, not for Tom Cruise.
The 52-year-old actor has attempted—and successfully pulled off—one of his most impressive and dangerous stunts to date, flying 5,000 feet over the U.K. countryside while hanging from the tale of an Airbus A400 M aircraft.
Cruise completed the death-defying stunt for his upcoming Christopher McQuarrie-directed flick Mission Impossible 5, which he is currently filming alongside Jeremy Renner and Rebecca Ferguson.
And clearly, the Oscar-nominated thesp wasn’t afraid to test his limits, suspending himself from the plane with only two safety harnesses while wearing a perfectly tailored suit as he channels his inner Ethan Hunt.
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In true Tom Cruise fashion, the action lover completed the stunt with minimal assistance, and at one point, was even seen hanging from the plane in a horizontal position.
This isn’t the first time Cruise has pulled off a jaw-dropping stunt for one of his many adventure films. He previously scaled the tallest building in the world for Ghost Protocal, shooting a scene from 100-plus stories up on the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
So after years of on-set adrenaline rushes, does he ever plan to use a stunt double?
“Not yet, not yet,” the actor told E! News at the NYC premiere of Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol back in Dec. 2011. “I’m sure there will be, but not yet.”
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“When I said, ‘I’ll do Top Gun,’ they had to put it in my contract that I got to fly in the F-14, and I wanted shots in the movie of me in the F-14,” he recalled. “When you look back at the legends of [silent movie stars] Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Chaplin—those guys, they were just doing on-camera stuff and that’s what I grew up on.”
He continued, adding, “I’m a cinephile geek. I just love movies, and I just want to entertain an audience and do what I can. I love the adventures.”
In May 2013, it was announced that the A-lister had signed a deal with Paramount Pictures to return for a fifth installment of his Mission: Impossible franchise. He is also producing the film, which follows the most recent flick Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol—a certified box office hit.
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