Tom Cruise reflects on intense training before performing stunts: ‘I enjoy the pressure’

Tom Cruise shared his love for the “pressure” that comes with a “challenging” stunt like his death-defying motorcycle stunt in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

Speaking to Fandango, the superstar reflected on his training process before filming stunts for his action-packed thrillers while also dishing on the role of his age plays.

"Look, as an actor and just in my life, I've always trained just to make movies," the Top Gun star, who has been enjoying the success of his latest release, told the publication.

"I train in many things — singing, dancing, motorcycles, cars — and also my personal life, I like skydiving and speed-flying and all these things. And I like to then go learn these things and then apply it to the movies,” he added.

Cruise said audience see him running on the screen one time but in reality, he sometimes has to sprint “50 times” while filming the sequence and even though he is super fit, if he gets injured during the process, he has to take a break to heal.

"But it is a real trick, and I have gone through to figure out, ‘How do I train? How do I maintain? How do you hit peak right at the moment?’ Because also when I'm doing a sprinting scene, I don't just run once. Sometimes I've done 50 sprints in one day," he said.

"So, I have to think about what the recovery time is, what scenes I'm shooting before and after, and I've gotten better at really structuring things within the film and sitting down and going, ‘Here’s where I have to prepare for the jump off the motorcycle,’” Cruise continued.

“So, there are certain things in you using your body a different way or if I'm doing gymnastics or a fighting scene. You know, you don't want to do a fight right there when I'm going to sprint. And how do I prepare? And how do I recover?"

Cruise said, "And also the hours that I work, I work seven days a week, and I'm producing and everything that we are dealing with during this time period."

Sharing his love for creating some of the blockbuster movies of all time, he said, "I have to say I enjoy the pressure, I do enjoy the challenge, but I realize – I woke up, and I enjoy this."