Mission: Impossible franchise star – Tom Cruise, in a conversation with talk show host Graham Norton on May 25 last year, admitted that he broke the law for one of the films in which he had to shoot a helicopter stunt.
Talking about stunts, Cruise has been famously adamant about performing his own, regardless of how dangerous they are, thereby not risking the lives of stuntmen working in his films.
For this year’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Cruise spoke with Capital FM and elaborated on how he could have died performing the motorcycle cliff stunt as he got stuck in the crosswinds.
But, the one that came before this, Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018), put Cruise on the other side of the law as he confessed that he did not have an official license to fly a helicopter.
Tom Cruise Flew a Helicopter Without a License
Mission: Impossible – Fallout had one of the most exhilarating helicopter chase sequences, as Cruise pointed out, and the cast filmed most of the action scenes in Paris and other parts of Europe.
Revealing that he rigorously trained to fly a helicopter before he actually went to obtain a flying license a little prior to Fallout, Cruise accepted being guilty of breaking the law.
Cruise said on The Graham Norton Show –
“I spent two years with McQ [Christopher McQuarrie – Director] and we were talking about an aerial sequence with a helicopter, and I’ve wanted, I’ve studied many different films. So, when I got my helicopter license and we’re flying…” [Norton interrupts] – “I was surprised you didn’t have a helicopter license. It’s so not you.”
Norton, in a state of excitement, said that he had seen Tom Cruise fly helicopters before and asked him if he had flouted the law in his career with flying machines, he politely replied – ‘Yes.’ Though he didn’t reveal if it landed him in trouble.
Tom Cruise Found The Helicopter Chase Dangerous
Regardless of Cruise breaking the law with helicopters and airplanes in previous films, he admitted that the helicopter chase with co-star and antagonist Henry Cavill was a dangerous one.
He hard-pressed on the fact that there is only one country in the world that allowed them to film those scenes and Cavill later revealed that it all went down in New Zealand.
He further shared in the same interview on The Graham Norton Show,
“The helicopter sequence is just incredibly exhilarating and very ‘dangerous.’ So, there’s only one country that would allow us to do it where we built special camera rigs for the helicopter. So, I got my license and I trained in aerobatics, but helicopters are very different. We’re flying very low, very close to rock faces, and I’m chasing Henry.”
Mission: Impossible – Fallout starred Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Michelle Monaghan, Ving Rhames, and Vanessa Kirby in supporting roles.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One could land on Paramount+ on either October 10 or November 9, depending upon the 90 to 120-day waiting period.
Source: The Graham Norton Show
