Tom Cruise worked as a "one-man film crew" while shooting his latest flying stunt in the Mission: Impossible franchise.
In Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, the Hollywood action man pulls off yet another death-defying stunt for real, with him hanging from and crawling along the wings of a 1940s-era biplane as it flies over a mountain range in South Africa.
Director Christopher McQuarrie told People that Cruise wasn't just acting in the sequence - he was also flying the plane and in charge of filming.
"Anytime you see Tom in the plane, he's at the controls," McQuarrie said. "He's basically a one-man film crew: operating the camera, acting and flying."
Stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood assured the publication that Cruise legitimately pulled off the aerial sequence himself and did not need any help from visual effects in post-production.
"Everyone will think we did some on green screen on the ground. I guarantee there was not one single shot that was not on a plane flying for real," he stated.
Cruise, who has been a licensed pilot since 1994, explained that he first envisioned himself trying the stunt when he saw old footage of wing-walking as a child and "trained so hard" to do it in the eighth instalment.
"Those aircraft were only travelling at, I don't know, 40, 50 miles an hour. This aircraft is up to over 120 miles an hour. Going out there, I was realising that it takes your breath away," he shared.
The 62-year-old also revealed that he prepared for the stunt by eating "a massive breakfast" to compensate for "the amount of energy" the sequence required.
"I'll eat, like, sausage and almost a dozen eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and fluids. Oh, I'm eating! Picture: It's cold up there. We're at high altitude. My body is burning a lot," he explained.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on 14 May.
