Tom Cruise has always boasted that he does his own stunts.
Whether it's driving a race car in "Days of Thunder," battling enemies with a samurai sword in "The Last Samurai"...
"The Last Samurai"
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In the much-hyped trailer, Cruise, reprising his role as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, ends up on a giant Airbus A400M plane and is hanging from the door as it takes off.
In today's era of Hollywood plugging in CGI for almost anything, when watching the scene teased one would likely assume it was done in a sound studio covered in green screen with a giant fan to project the star of the movie.But that's not Tom Cruise's style.
"I knew I wanted to have an airplane sequence. I've been thinking about it for a long time," Cruise told Yahoo Movies UK during an interview with director Christopher McQuarrie. "As a kid I remember flying on an airplane and thinking: 'what would it be like out on the wing or on the side of the airplane?!'"
So after eight takes on a runway in England, Cruise's childhood dream finally came true.
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When the production designer brought McQuarrie a model of an Airbus plane, the director joked to Cruise, "What if you were on the outside of this thing when it took off?' Cruise replied, "Yeah, I could do that."
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"You have jet fuel coming right out of the back at me because I'm on the wing of the engine," he said. "Even when we were taxying I was also inhaling the fumes and [it] was going in my eyes."
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"I remember one time we were going down the runway and there was just a little particle that just hit me, it was smaller than a finger nail," Cruise recalls. "I was thankful it didn't hit my hands or face, if it did I'd have a problem because those parts were exposed, but it still could have broken my ribs!"
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Cruise notes that he was strapped to the side of the plane from the moment the engine started to the moment it landed and the engine shut down - "The climb, the taxi, down the runway, getting the shot, leveling off, turning around and landing. And I did it EIGHT TIMES to get the shot."
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But when they got this shot, he said, "We're not doing it anymore!"
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