Tom Cruise went full Mission: Impossible mode for the closing ceremony at the 2024 Paris Olympics on Sunday with a stunt-filled special appearance that symbolically handed off the responsibilities of the Olympic games to Los Angeles — where they will be held in 2028.
Cruise, 62, who is famous for doing his own stunts in his movies, impressed the world when he repelled off the top of the Stade de France and dropped down through the air on safety wires before landing on the arena stage.
Cruise was greeted by athletes and cheered on by fans as he walked across the stage to the rocking guitar of H.E.R — who had also played the National Anthem shortly before.
Once on stage, Cruise met with and shook hands with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and gold medalist Simone Biles.
Cruise was then given the Olympic flag and ran off to a motorcycle waiting for him, where he attached the flag to the bike and rode out of the stadium.
From there, Cruise drove through the streets of Pairs — that is, he did so in a pre-recorded segment that saw the actor get on a plane and fly the flag to Los Angeles.
Once in the City of Angels, Cruise jumped out of the plane and soared through the L.A. skies and past the Hollywood sign, which had been modified to turn the two “O”s in “wood” into two of the five Olympic rings.
Cruise has long been famous for doing extreme stunts for several of his action films, many of which have never been achieved or attempted before.
In June 2023, Cruise spoke with ET while in Rome promoting Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and he revealed that the most dangerous stunt of his career — a motorcycle jump off of a cliff into a base jump — was the first-ever scene filmed for the action flick.
“Well, we know either we’re gonna continue with the film or we’re not,” Cruise said with a laugh of planning the death-defying stunt. “Let’s know day one… Do we all continue, or is it a major rewrite?”
In all seriousness, the actor added, it all came down to focus. “It was years preparing. I mean, I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was a little kid, raced cars and spent a lot of time just with aerobatics, airplanes, helicopters and parachutes… It all kind of came to that moment,” he explained.
“You have to be razor sharp when you do something like that, so it was very important as we were prepping the film that that actually was the first thing [to shoot], because I don’t want to drop that and go shoot other things and then have my mind somewhere else,” he continued. “Everyone was prepped, let’s just get it done.”
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