HE was in the news this week for eating two chicken tikka masalas on the trot, but Tom Cruise is now making headlines for something rather more dangerous.

 

Eating two vindaloos on the trot?

That would certainly be risky business on a number of fronts, but in this instance, mega star Cruise is in the news for undertaking his most dangerous stunt yet.

 

And that’s saying something?

Indeed, the 59-year-old has already pushed the envelope in that department, with his most memorable stunts including the scene in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol in 2011 that saw him scale the outside of the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which stretches 828m tall into the clouds. The story goes that the insurance firm wouldn’t allow him to proceed, so he is said to have fired them and found a firm that would cover his action scene.

 

Was he harnessed?

He had wires and suction cups but it still takes a lot of daring to climb more than half a mile into the sky.

 

What are his other famous stunts?

In 2015's Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Cruise hangs on to the side of a cargo plane as it takes off and in the same movie, in which he plays secret agent Ethan Hunt, he had to hold his breath for more than six minutes for an underwater scene. In the franchise’s Fallout film, released in 2018, he did all his own flying in the helicopter chase scene that sees the craft negotiate canyons and the proximity of another helicopter.

 

He hasn’t come out unscathed?

While jumping from the roof of one building to another while filming Fallout in London in 2017, he accidentally crashed into the wall and broke his ankle, undertaking 12-hours a day of rehab to speed up his recovery.

 

He’s filming in the UK?

He’s working on the latest Mission: Impossible 7 movie and while taking a break from filming last week, popped into an Indian restaurant in Birmingham where he enjoyed his chicken tikka masala so much, he ordered another.

 

Now?

A glimpse of footage from the movie was unveiled by producers at CinemaCon in Las Vegas and it apparently left the audience screaming in terror as it featured Cruise working with his stunt coordinators to prepare to ride a motorbike off a cliff, fly off the bike and parachute to the ground. US director and writer, Christopher McQuarrie, declared it not just the biggest stunt in MI7, but "by far the most dangerous stunt we have ever done”.

 

And he didn’t just do it once?

Preparation for the scene saw Cruise undertake 500 hours of skydiving training and wait for it…13,000 motorbike jumps. The CinemaCon crowd were apparently stunned by the final scene of Cruise doing the actual stunt himself as a stunt coordinator revealed: “Tom Cruise rode a motorcycle off a cliff six times today.”