Tom Cruise: Why I Am Never Afraid To Be Afraid

The latest Mission Impossible film is about to leave you absolutely breathless. But before it does, I set out on my own mission. Ask Tom Cruise if he's ready to say goodbye to a character he's played for 30 years. Well, congratulations, because I chewed all of my nails off. Did you? Let me see. Look, look at that. Honestly, honestly, that was you. It was your fault in that submarine. I was literally going like this. I could. It was breathtaking. In a race against time and time again, Tom Cruise has made the impossible possible. This can't all be true. Ethan Hunt will be your point man as usual. It's much worse than you think. As field agent Ethan Hunt, Tom has climbed the tallest building in the world. You're not helping. Hung off the side of a couple of planes and always left us wanting more, giving us eight Mission Impossible films across 30 years. You've got to be kidding. Now in Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning, the action hero to rule them all is still running circles around the bad guys. I need you to trust me one last time. A lot of the action sequences, when you're coming up with them, are you there in a room with a whiteboard being like, we couldn't? Could we? Normally, McHugh and I hear, you can't. You couldn't. And we dream about things. I mean, we dreamed of making a submarine film, you know, for years. Was that one of the hardest sequences that you've ever done? Oh, without question. No, without question. It was, you know, we had to develop the mask and companies that actually, there's technology, we're inventing technology when we're doing these movies. And it takes years of preparation. You know, I mean, one movie goes into the next. If you look at the aerial sequences that I've done and started all the way back from Top Gun, the very first Top Gun has an influence here. The underwater sequence goes all the way back to Legend, which was my very first underwater sequence. So different films like what Disney did with Fantasia. Okay, that had a big effect on my storytelling and singing in the rain, seeing Gene Kelly move and how you can accomplish development of character and story through motion, through music. That's been my life. It's like I learned one thing here and then I take it to the next. Different kinds of forms of storytelling, different genres. And that's, that's, that is my life. When you're training, have you ever been tempted to chuck on the Mission Impossible theme song? I must have, definitely. Because I love the Mission Impossible theme song. It's one of the reasons as a kid that I thought the concept of Mission Impossible and the theme music, that whole idea of kind of taking it from a Cold War TV series into a feature film. Yeah, so you gotta put it on. I mean, when I hear it on phones or different things, it's like it gets your blood going. Well, good, because then the second part of this question is, maybe imagine that when I show you this footage. Because I saw recently Glenn Power, one of your classmates and friends from Top Gun, said that you gave him advice that you've got to film yourself when you're running because you're never as cool as you think. My training has begun, Mr. Cruise. Let's see, let's see. Nicely done. Very nice with the arms and stepping. That's excellent. How do we run like Tom Cruise? What do I, what do we need to do? What's the process? I really, I don't know. There's more running in this one. I know, I've always been a sprinter my whole life. Since I was a little kid, I just wanted to run. And oh gosh, I remember when growing up and we'd get one pair of sneakers like for a year, you know, when I was a little kid and the feet are growing. I would take it out and immediately I felt like I can run faster. I really was like, now I can run fast with these new shoes. Of course, I hit every mud puddle and puddle I could get into and, you know, the cuts and all of that. So it was something that I've always, I love the feeling of sprinting, the feeling of that wind going past my body and the speed of it. And it's just the joy of being able to use the body in that way and push it. I've always thought of a body as like a car. You know, it's something that I use to be able to communicate and move as an artist in different films. So it's, and sprinting for me is a real joy. The Kremlin bombing. In fairness, the bomb was actually meant to kill him. As a film nerd, I really appreciate all of the effort and the joy that you always put into every role. It hasn't disappeared. You know what? It's expanded. It has not disappeared. It's the passion. I remember hoping and thinking as a kid, I remember on my first film taps and thinking, I just want to do this the rest of my life at the level that I want to do it. And, you know, I'm saying to people like, you have to just live life and you got, don't be afraid to be afraid. People ask me, are you afraid? Yeah. It's like... Because you should be. Yeah, but there's things like even in life where I feel it, but I'm not afraid to feel it. I think that's the difference. I'm not afraid to be afraid. I'm not afraid to not know something and work on trying to figure out how to know it. I'm all in. You know, I'm all in as a friend, as a co-worker, you know, as kind of, you know, attacking life really. And it's okay to say, I don't know. You know, all my crew, when I'm working, they hear me. It's like, they ask me questions or what's the answer? Like sometimes it's like, I wish I knew. I don't know, but I will figure it out. You know, and we will figure it out together. That's to me, that's what life is about. That's what movies are about. It's all of us together. It's not just me. Anytime anyone goes, well, your movie on my crew. I'm like, listen, man, and it's not, you're here right here with me. Sorry, buddy. But you're, you know, ladies and gentlemen, you are responsible for this also. We're together. We're a team. But that's very Ethan Hunt of you. Yeah, it is. Our lives are the sum of our choices. This is recalling your destiny. Final is in the title, that word. Is this the last that we've seen of Ethan Hunt? I don't want to ruin anything for any audience. This is a culmination of the last 30 years of making Mission Impossible and this story. But I'm not going to ruin anything. You're going to have to go see it. You got to just go see it. And I think they will. Tom Cruise, what a pleasure. Thank you for being here. Of course. Did you just fly in specifically for this? Well, thank you very much. I am here for you. Thank you so much. And I am here for you. Oh, fantastic. Wonderful. Everyone else go home. Thank you. Georgie skipped her mom's lamb roast to be there. Now, listen, Sam wants to know. I want to know. Your mom wants to know. Yeah. What's he smell like? Honestly, the first thing that my mom asked was like, do you, was there a fragrance coming from John Cruise? Could you identify it? To be honest, I don't think my nose was engaged because I was too like, where am I? What's happening? So I don't, there was no discernible fragrance. Yes. Yeah. But he smells like a movie star. I'll say that. I would like to know how the running is going. For me? Yeah. Still running. That's not a bad review, I thought. That was your start. But like, have you worked on any further motions? No, the arms and the stepping. I haven't exactly. He's so intense, isn't he? Being in that room with him. And you actually, you got a quite a good chunk of time. Oh, yeah. They couldn't wrap him up. No, no. This was the thing. We sat down and we're a lot of, you know, how these things work. You're a lot of between, you know, five, ten minutes. We had ten minutes and Tom was very, very generous with his time. We got wrapped twice and he said, no, no, do not worry about that. Let us keep chatting. If you had more time, would you have done a hundred meter sprint? Probably would have. Would have taken me that long. Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning is out in cinemas this Saturday. It is very, very good. I genuinely did bite all of my nails off.