Thandie Newton was 'so scared' of Tom Cruise during Mission: Impossible 2 shoot

Thandie Newton has revealed she was "so scared" of Tom Cruise while making Mission: Impossible 2 because of his dominant personality.

The Westworld actress opened up about playing Nyah Nordoff-Hall, a thief-turned-spy and the love interest of Cruise's character Ethan Hunt, in the 2000 film in an extensive interview with Vulture.
During the chat, she recalled how working with the action man pushed her into a place of "terror and insecurity".

"I was so scared of Tom. He was a very dominant individual. He tries super hard to be a nice person. But the pressure. He takes on a lot. And I think he has this sense that only he can do everything as best as it can be done," she shared.

She remembered shooting a scene set on a balcony in Spain that involved many extras and pyrotechnics and how Cruise was "not happy with what I was doing" because her lines were not well written, so he suggested they rehearse on-camera, with him doing her lines and Newton doing his.

"It was the most unhelpful... I can’t think of anything less revealing. It just pushed me further into a place of terror and insecurity. It was a real shame. And bless him. And I really do mean bless him, because he was trying his damnedest," she continued, before describing what happened when they re-shot the scene the following week.

"The next time we shot it, I went in there and I just basically manifested all the - because I realized what he wanted. He just wanted this alpha b**ch. And I did as best as I could. It’s not the best way to get the best work out of someone," she stated.

Newton, who noted that Cruise's then-wife Nicole Kidman got her the role, went on to insist that he "wasn’t horrible", just "really stressed", while she was "so tender and sensitive" at the time.