Director Christopher McQuarrie makes it clear: o Tom Cruise he risks his life to film his action scenes. He should know: he’s directed three of the seven films “Mission: Impossible” that have been released. The actor has specialists who occasionally stand in for him, but when it comes time for the action scenes, be it a jump or a fight, a chase or a shootout, he asks to do them himself. And although there are mandatory safety measures, there is always the risk of something going wrong.

Here are some of the most memorable moments Cruise, who turned 61 on July 3, has risked life and limb for his art.

  • Climbing the World’s Tallest Skyscraper in ‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol’ (2011)

The Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, has been the tallest skyscraper in the world since 2004. Seven years later, Ethan Hunt – that is, Tom Cruise – climbed it, broke some windows and hanged himself from it under the direction of Brad Bird. Both had previously consulted experts, other climbers and architects on how to shoot this scene.

The day before filming began, Cruise told Byrd he wanted to climb to the top without harnesses or any safety measures to take a picture.

  • Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)

The final battle between Tom Cruise and the villain, played by Dougray Scott (an actor whose filming delays prevented him from playing the role of Wolverine and whose career went down the drain), may seem like a minor affair, but has its peculiarities.

John Woo wanted to give the fight strength and credibility. At one point, Scott climbs onto Tom Cruise, who is down, and tries to stab him in the eye. One wrong move and Ethan Hunt would now be wearing an eye patch.

  • Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)

The beginning of Woo’s film isn’t bad either, with Ethan Hunt free climbing at Dead Horse Point, Utah. Filming took five days, with ropes holding Cruise, who was replaced on the jump by stuntman Keith Campbell.

  • The fall from the Shanghai skyscraper in “Mission: Impossible 3” (2006)

How will Hunt gain access to a skyscraper where his kidnapped wife is being held in Shanghai? After flying around various buildings, the course of action is to fall off the facade of one of them. JJ Abrams, the director of M:I 3, liked the idea, but it was filmed in a shed for the safety of the protagonist. It was right at the end when Cruise had his moment of glory: He fell in front of the screen, attached to a crane, from a height of about 200 feet.

  • The helicopter chase in ‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’ (2018)

In this helicopter chase in New Zealand’s Southern Alps, Cruise acts and pilots between steep slopes, sans special effects.

  • The aquarium explosion from ‘Mission: Impossible’ (1996)

Hunt is in Prague, surrounded by enemies, and there is only one way out: a spectacular escape. Brian de Palma was going to use a stuntman in this scene, in which the protagonist runs out of a restaurant, blowing up a huge aquarium as an escape maneuver. However, he didn’t like the way it was turning out and asked Cruise if he would mind shooting it himself. He did it…

  • The high altitude skydive from ‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’ (2018)

This film is full of memorable Cruise moments, such as the one that made him the first actor to star in an actual HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) jump on screen, that is, a high jump followed by a rapid free fall, with the parachute opening at low altitude.

After a year of preparation, the actor jumped in a special helmet that supplied him with oxygen and allowed his face to be seen. Before jumping from the C-17 plane carrying him, he breathed pure oxygen for 20 minutes to avoid decompression problems.

  • A nearby car in ‘Jack Reacher’ (2012)

The first of the two “Jack Reacher” sequels was also directed by McQuarrie, who says that sometimes the most dangerous moments are the most unexpected: in one sequence, Rosamund Pike reverses a car out of a parking space and when she moves forward she suddenly finds Cruise in front of her. Rosamund is an actress, not a driver, and if she made a mistake or miscalculated the distance, she would have run over him.

  • The plane takes off with Hunt hanging from it in ‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation’ (2015)

“Benji, open the door!” shouts Ethan Hunt as he hangs from an A400 plane taking off. Cruise is actually strapped in with a seat belt, though that wouldn’t protect him from being hit by a rock during takeoff or a bird during flight.

  • A broken ankle on the rooftops of London in ‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’ (2018)

Another hallmark of the M:I series is Hunt’s running and jumping across the rooftops of any city. This time it was London, and with a seemingly easy leap he crossed from one rooftop to another, but hit a wall and broke his ankle. Filming was halted for nine weeks and the studio had to pay about $80 million in extra costs for the delay.

  • “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” (2015)

He was trained to lower his heart rate in order to consume less oxygen. And he succeeded. Tom Cruise stayed underwater for 6.5 minutes. While promoting the premiere on The Graham Norton Show, the actor stated that the experience was very unpleasant. For a few years Cruise held the world record (among actors) for how to hold his breath underwater, until Kate Winslet reached 7 minutes and 15 seconds on the set of the movie “Avatar: The Road to Water” ».

  • The plane crash in The Mummy (2017)

In the movie “The Mummy”, Tom Cruise tries to survive a plane crash in a free-falling, out-of-control military plane. To do this, they filmed in a plane that astronauts use to train in zero gravity. The whole idea was, of course, the actor’s.

  • Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Christopher McQuarrie says the scariest thing for him wasn’t the jump advertised on social media, but a skydive. On top of that, Cruise is doing it off a steep slope. The actor speeds a motorcycle up a mountain (a ramp built in Norway after rehearsing on another in England) and when he reaches the end he lets it go, flies against the wind for about six seconds and then opens his parachute, with several cameras on drones and a helicopter recording his every move. He didn’t do it once: he did it six times, until he got it right.