Behind the scenes on Tom Cruise's most daring 'Mission: Impossible' stunts

Tom Cruise famously does nearly all of his own stunts throughout the "Mission: Impossible" series and is constantly finding ways to elevate them to new levels. In "Mission: Impossible 2" (2000), he free-solo climbed on camera, a stunt which was originally supposed to be done by a professional climber. In "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol" (2011), Cruise climbed on the side of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is the world's tallest building. For the action scenes in "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation" (2015), he clung to the side of an airplane flying 1,000 feet in the air and then trained alongside co-star Rebecca Ferguson to hold his breath underwater for an extended period of time. In "Mission: Impossible — Fallout" (2018), he performed a HALO jump on camera from 25,000 feet in the air, trained 16 hours a day to fly a helicopter, and then rode a motorcycle at up to 100 mph in Paris. In the latest installment, "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One" (2023), Cruise's stunts involve a motorbike jump off a mountain, a one-handed car chase while handcuffed to actress Hayley Atwell, intense fight choreography in Venice's narrow alleyways, and a fight scene on top of a moving train.