Tom Cruise Pushed Through The Pain Of A Broken Ankle To Finish A Mission: Impossible - Fallout Scene
Tom Cruise is no stranger to doing his stunts — whether it's running down the world's tallest building in "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol" or flying a helicopter in "Mission: Impossible — Fallout," it's truly remarkable to see all he has achieved in the action genre. His contributions have made him a bonafide action star, and Cruise has only one-upped himself with every new stunt since the onset of his career.
As Cruise will attest, he is also no stranger to struggling with injuries. With every new film, the actor delivers the most impossible-seeming action, with stakes higher than ever before. Cruise reinvents himself every time; he's committed to his art and does whatever it takes to complete a scene ... even if it requires him to push through the pain of a broken ankle.
No pain ... no gain?
Even a well-choreographed action scene can sometimes go wrong, and it's up to the actor to navigate how to move forward. Cruise has insisted on performing his stunts because he has a fascinating relationship with danger — he has been trying out tricky flips and bicycle jumps since he was a child. He proved his unwavering commitment to his work again during the filming of "Mission: Impossible — Fallout," in a rooftop chase against co-star Henry Cavill that seriously injured the actor and temporarily caused production to shut down.
You'd think Cruise would ask to be moved to emergency care ... but the star was more worried about whether they managed to film the take.
In behind-the-scenes footage of the film, director Christopher McQuarrie, stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood, Cruise, and his co-star Simon Pegg went over the scene. In the completed sequence, the actor is seen jumping from scaffolding on one building to seemingly the rooftop of the other — but the stunt was designed to depict Cruise's character falling short of his landing. The actor injured his leg while putting it out mid-air to soften his impact on hitting the attached wall, but the force of his jump caused his ankle to twist and break. Despite the agony he found himself in, Cruise pulled himself up and crawled to move past the camera so that the scene wouldn't be ruined.
McQuarrie described the intended scene as a "small bit of action that joined two acts together," which later grew in "size and in complexity."
The shot of Cruise breaking his ankle was added to the film
Cruise tried to make the landing during the first two takes — but it was too hard. He detailed the scene:
"First two takes I went in quite hard, and it knocks the wind out of you, but it looks cool so I was like, 'alright.'... Put my foot out literally for a split second to try to soften the impact just a hair. I looked down ... [inhales in pain] I crawled over the wall just to get past camera because I knew this is the take."
The impact put pressure on Cruise's foot and snapped his ankle, but his injury was the least of his concern. McQuarrie confirmed, "First thing he did was turn to the camera operator and say, 'Did you get that?' The shot of Tom breaking his ankle actually made it into the film."
Cruise's stunt coordinator and co-star Simon Pegg were in awe of his performance — Eastwood called him an "athlete" while Pegg described him as "incredibly safety-conscious."
Further, Pegg shared that the actor never engaged in anything he wasn't sure wasn't safe or doable. "People think that he's reckless, and he's not," he said.
Following "Mission: Impossible — Fallout," Tom Cruise was seen in 2022's "Top Gun: Maverick," which became the highest-grossing film of the actor's illustrious career. Along with intense action sequences, the film was also packed with emotional weight, and it was essential to Cruise that the audience resonated with it emotionally. Cruise will return to the silver screen later this year with "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning."