A MAN ON A MISSION..

Daredevil Tom pulls out all the stops in latest installment

- ANNA BURNSIDE

JUMPING a motorbike off a cliff. Driving round Rome while handcuffed to his co-star. If you see Tom Cruise doing it in a movie, he's really doing it.

Not a body double, not a stunt man in a wig, not a bit of clever digital smoke and mirrors, it's the 61-year-old pushing himself to his limits to make Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One as convincing as possible.

And he has no plans to slow down.

He said: "It's what I truly love to do. I love making movies and I'm never going to stop. It's what I have done my whole life. I don't know anything else."

Dubbed by the filmmakers as the biggest stunt in Hollywood history Tom rode a motorbike off a Norwegian cliff six times to get the scene perfect for the seventh Mission: Impossible film.

It was always his dream stunt.

He said: "I rode a motorcycle a lot when I was a kid and have done a lot of work on motorcycles in my career so I like to think I'm pretty good at it. But that was something else. It was wild."

Speeding around Rome one-handed, while handcuffed to Hayley Atwell, was another highlight of the shoot.

He added: "It was a tiny car and the sequence was very complicated as it was over cobblestone roads and pavements. It was pretty crazy but a lot of fun."

Tom hopes these mega-stunts, against eye-popping backdrops, will tempt audiences to the cinema to enjoy the full movie experience.

Despite life largely going back to normal after the Covid pandemic, people haven't been flocking back to cinemas and are happier to sit at home in their jammies and watch blockbusters on big-screen TVs.