Tom Cruise’s ‘Jerry McGuire’ co-star Beau Bridges thinks the 63-year-old actor is getting better as he gets older.
“I really appreciated working with him,” said Bridges, who co-starred with Cruise in the ’90s rom-com People while attending the “Matlock” For Your Consideration event last week. “He’s a great actor and just gets better with age. I mean, he still does all those crazy stunts and stuff. Yeah. And I love working with him. I thought he was great.”
Bridges isn’t the only actor to have thoughts on Cruise’s legendary stunts.
Earlier this year, Ethan Hawke revealed that he has become “angry” with Cruise, explaining that the “Mission: Impossible” star’s risky stunt work has changed audiences’ and studios’ expectations of actors across Hollywood.
“Tom Cruise completely changed what was expected of actors,” Hawke said Variety at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in February. “Part of me gets angry over the years because everyone somehow feels like they’re inferior when they use a stunt team.”
While Cruise — who returns for “Top Gun 3” — has never appeared in a superhero film from Marvel, DC or any other comic book franchise, the actor cemented his status as an action movie icon by insisting on performing increasingly dangerous, real-world stunts himself in blockbuster franchises including “Mission: Impossible,” “Top Gun” and “Jack Reacher.”
Last year, Cruise nearly broke his back while performing a stunt for “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.”
In bonus features from the film’s digital release, Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie describe one of the film’s most gripping scenes: a high-flying battle in a biplane between the actor’s character, Ethan Hunt, and Gabriel, played by Esai Morales.
The scene showed Ethan jumping from one plane to another, clinging to the wing in mid-air.
“Oh, this almost broke my back,” Cruise told Entertainment Weekly.
“You’re talking about a lot of pain here,” McQuarrie chimed in.
In the music video, Cruise’s character was seen grabbing a seatbelt and holding on for dear life as the plane turned upside down.
“Look at this thing we hadn’t talked about yet, holding on to this leash,” McQuarrie described, while Cruise said, “Oh God, that was brutal.”
The director further explained: “This separated the joints in Tom’s fingers from the force, so by the time we finished this sequence your hands were absolutely swollen – oh my God, it was so painful to watch.”
During the intense scene, Cruise’s character was forced to crash into the side of the plane. As he remembered the pain, the Hollywood actor said, “Oh, that was cruel. That blow, that was a hard one.”
McQuarrie joked, “And you improvised that, thank you very much. I appreciate that. You said, ‘I think we’re going to need that,’ and I said, ‘I didn’t ask you to do that.'”
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