While discussing actors he considers his peers on a podcast recently, Oscar-winner Sean Penn took the conversation in a somewhat unexpected direction. He didn’t mention fellow Oscar-winner Daniel Day Lewis, to whom many often compare him. He reached back to a very long ago co-star with whom he says he still has a very friendly relationship.
“Tom Cruise…he is a guy who pursues excellence on a very high level,” Penn replied.
Penn quickly addressed the apples-to-oranges questions some might raise about the differences between the kind of indie films he makes and the blockbusters that Cruise does.
“Now, I understand certain kinds of movies people appreciate more than other kinds of movies,” he said, not identifying which was which, “but this is a very good actor who’s also an extraordinarily committed craftsman.”
Penn continued: “Those movies don’t get made on that level — whether you love ’em or they’re not your cup of tea — they don’t get made on that level without somebody extraordinary behind it, and he’s the common link between too many of them for it not to be him. It’s no accident.”
Then came another bold statement.
“He’s probably the best stuntman in the movie world, when it comes to the amount of skills he has and what he can do with them,” said Penn, “and maybe the most experienced in things because they choreographing things for him to do that nobody’s every been able to afford to put another stuntman to the test on, so he’s probably advanced the whole thing. Pretty amazing.”
At this point, podcast host Louis Theroux interjected with, “Apologies to all the stuntmen out there.”
Penn replied, “I would like to think they probably celebrate a guy like that. It makes the whole genre, that is the most demanding of those skills, create more jobs. I’m sure he’s had some very good training from exceptional stunt people, as well.”
The podcast conversation comes as Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning director Christopher McQuarrie described a wild new stunt Cruise does in the film.
“When you watch Tom tonight, there’s a moment where he’s in an airplane,” McQuarrie said. “He’s in a biplane, completely alone at the controls.”
Cruise essentially was acting as the crew from that plane, McQuarrie explained, because at 10,000 feet above the African landscape, he was alone up there. “Tom is lighting the shot by how he’s positioning the plane and its relationship to the sun, and he’s operating focus just off-camera. He is the crew in every single shot you’re seeing. And nobody tells you to stop.
“When you leave the cockpit of the plane, it’s like stepping onto the surface of another planet,” McQuarrie said. “The wind is hitting you in excess of 140 miles an hour coming off of the propeller. The molecules in the air are so dispersed. You’re breathing, but only physically. You’re not actually getting oxygen.”
You can hear the rest of the gripping story here, including the moments they weren’t sure if Cruise was conscious or not. Suffice to say, the actor eventually managed recover and land the plane safely with maybe two minutes of fuel left to spare.
McQuarrie ended his tale with, “No one on Earth can do that.”