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Five actors who do their own stunts, after Tom Cruise sets the gold standard in Mission: Impossible 6

Superstar Cruise has long insisted on doing his own stunt work in the Mission: Impossible series; that has included scaling the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa in Dubai, with suction cups. Here are some others who do their own

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Tom Cruise has done his own stunts in the Mission: Impossible series from scaling the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, with suction cups to dangling from the side of an Airbus A400 plane. Photo: Alamy
SCMP Reporter

The reviews are in, and Mission: Impossible – Fallout thrills, with many chalking up the film’s success, in part, to eye-popping stunt work by Tom Cruise.

“Whether [Cruise is] skydiving, riding a bike through the streets of Paris, fighting an assailant in a bathroom or flying a helicopter through treacherous canyons, there’s something utterly mesmerising about his quest for realism,” the Post’s reviewer wrote.

Tom Cruise has long insisted on doing his own stunt work, which in the always exciting Mission: Impossible series has brought his stunt work to ever greater heights – literally. In 2011’s Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol, Cruise trained for months to scale the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, with suction cups – to run back down the building sideways in a later scene.

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The next film in the globe-trotting series, 2015’s Mission : Impossible Rogue Nation, saw Cruise dangling from the side of an Airbus A400 plane over the English countryside.

Over the years, Cruise has suffered a number of on-set injuries and endured near-death experiences. For this sixth Mission: Impossible film the 56-year-old broke an ankle in a jump scene gone wrong. Cruise is hardly the only action star to perform most of his or her own feats of daring. We take a look at five others who took the leap and had audiences going: “Wow.”

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