20 stunts only Tom Cruise can pull off

Cruise was a newly minted superstar when he took on the role of hot-shot fighter pilot Maverick in “Top Gun.” And yet he was still able to stipulate in his contract that he was guaranteed flight time in the F-14 jets, especially for some of the wildest combat maneuvers. Now that he’s a licensed pilot, one wonders if he’ll actually fly his own plane for the upcoming sequel.

The Burj Khalifa measures 2,722 feet to the tip of its spire. Credit to Tom Cruise for limiting his derring-do merely the higher floors of the building. The sequence involved Cruise’s Ethan Hunt stepping outside the building and free climbing from one floor to another. No stunt double was involved, but he was securely harnessed throughout the entire sequence.

There is a gnarly smash-em-up sequence in "Jack Reacher" that most movie stars would want absolutely no part of. Cruise, of course, wanted to be behind the wheel in every shot, and at this point in his career, no one is in a position to stop him. Along with being breathtakingly exciting, the sequence also shows off Pittsburgh to thrilling effect.

Inspired by the silent heist sequence in Jules Dassin’s “Topkapi,” director Brian De Palma had Cruise train in wires to pull off the acrobatic theft of top secret information from CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. It’s a slick piece of filmmaking, and it wouldn’t have been half as compelling without knowing Cruise in near-constant closeup.

There are no less than five over-the-top stunts in "Mission: Impossible – Fallout." From jumping on a moving helicopter to actually flying the helicopter to riding through the streets of Paris at top speeds, Cruise pushed the limits as far as he could making the latest addition to the "Mission:Impossible" franchise. At least the filming of this one proved Cruise is human, he broke his ankle during a daring rooftop chase sequence. 

Cruise, who loves to be involved in his own stunts, came up with the idea of doing the trick reverse motorcycle ride for co-star Cameron Diaz on his own according to an interview with Access Hollywood. "She’s strong enough. The great thing about Cameron is she’s enormously talented, funny and athletic. There’s a lot of trust because she had full flash blanks in the gun as she’s going around [me], they’re coming past my head and she was always — you have to be there with someone and really know that they’re gonna be there.”

This time Ethan Hunt inexplicably finds himself trapped on the outside of an Atlas C1 transport craft as it takes off. Viewers initially wrote the stunt off as CG trickery, but that’s really Cruise hanging on to the side of the aircraft. The production claims Cruise performed the sequence eight times before they got the shot that made it into the movie.

This stunt would’ve been far more impressive had director J.J. Abrams allowed Cruise to dive off the actual Shanghai skyscraper. Instead, they executed the sequence in the more controlled confines of a studio, though Cruise was still flinging himself off a remarkably tall structure with only a safety harness to ensure he wouldn’t merge with the pavement.

Laugh all you want, but anyone who’s ever tried to pull off flair bartending as featured in 1988’s very awful “Cocktail” has probably spent the next twenty minutes picking up glass and mopping up booze. As for why thirsty bar patrons would excitedly watch their bartenders fling around liquor bottles for a single overpriced cocktail, that’s probably a trick only Tom Cruise could pull off.

Many of the stunts listed here are insanely dangerous. This one is all about physical precision. When a couple of thugs attempt to steal Cruise’s briefcase, he snaps into frighteningly vicious action, gunning them down before they can get a shot off. Cruise’s performance as a contract killer in “Collateral” represents his finest work since “Rain Man.” He should play the villain more often.

Did you think Tom Cruise was going to make a samurai movie and not wield a blade himself? Though the combat was all carefully choreographed, one false step and you could be missing some fingers. Cruise evidently had a mishap while riding a mechanical horse, but his skilled costar, Hiroyuki Sanada made a life-saving readjustment.

There is the scene where Cruise rides his father’s Porsche 928 into Lake Michigan, but the truly impressive stunt in “Risky Business” finds the star lip synching Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock & Roll” clad in nothing but a pink oxford, white socks and tighty-whities underwear. Anyone else would look like a world-class dork, but Cruise made it look cool. It’s the scene that made him a star. 

Tom Cruise spent two days on high-altitude flights in zero gravity to simulate the harrowing plane crash set piece in “The Mummy.” According to director Alex Kurtzman, a great deal of vomit was expelled. It took sixty-four takes to get the footage needed, but Cruise never goes half-way — even if it means getting reacquainted with that morning’s breakfast.

Cruise spends a good deal of this Ireland-set yarn on horseback, but his most impressive physical feat was engaging in bare-knuckle fisticuffs with an assortment of burly stuntmen. True, these fight sequences are always choreographed to ensure no one loses a tooth, but you’ve got to get close to make it look real, and Cruise took some legit chops to the body.

Cast as hair-metal frontman Stacee Jaxx in the big-screen adaptation of the Broadway jukebox musical “Rock of Ages”, Cruise somehow shows he has the pipes to be at least a credible rock star. He’s a little better with Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is” than Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” but he doesn’t embarrass himself. The man can do it all.

There aren’t any crazy physical stunts in Stanley Kubrick’s final movie, but Cruise and his castmates (including then wife Nicole Kidman) deserves kudos for having endured what Guinness cites as — at fifteen months — the longest film shoot in cinema history. There’s also the added challenge of having to film dozens of takes to the director’s exacting specifications. The film took Cruise off the market for nearly two years. That’s an amazing risk for a superstar at the peak of his popularity.

Cruise does some spontaneous acrobatics with some street performers early on in this adaptation of John Grisham’s best seller, but he saves his most impressive stunt for later in the film when he beats the stuffing out of a very old and not terribly scrapping Wilford Brimley. It’s impressive the entire audience didn’t turn against him!

Another crazy car chase, and this time Cruise didn’t walk away unblemished; after falling off a car, he slashed himself on a jagged piece of metal. Cruise and co-star Emily Blunt also had to don some pretty hefty body armor for their combat scenes. Cruise estimates that the rig weighed anywhere from 85 pounds to 125 pounds.

Inspired by his “Color of Money” co-star Paul Newman, Cruise got heavily into stock car racing, which culminated in this modestly successful 1990 Tony Scott film. The reunion of Top Gun collaborators Cruise and Scott had all of Hollywood expecting “'Top Gun' on Wheels,” but it didn’t take off in quite the same way. But it wasn’t for lack of effort on Cruise’s part; he was frequently behind the wheel of the car for some fairly precarious stunts.

Though not quite as dicey as hanging on for dear life outside of a cargo plane, Cruise pulled off the impressive feat of holding his breath underwater for three minutes in a single take. But Cruise wasn’t done showing off his lung capacity; according to one of the stunt coordinators, he managed to stay under for six minutes at one point.