When Tom Cruise made a rare late-night TV appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live Friday night, there were no questions about his close ties to the Church of Scientology. But Jimmy Kimmel did spend much of the interview trying to get to the bottom of whether Cruise will eventually kill himself on screen in an attempt to pull off his latest death-defying stunt.
“Did you risk your life today?” Kimmel asked his guest, who came to the studio straight from shooting the upcoming Mission: Impossible film.
“Well, I did get in a car in this weather,” Cruise quipped, referring to the L.A. rain, “so I think we all did.”
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Cruise was ostensibly on the show to promote Top Gun: Maverick, which is up for Best Picture at next month’s Oscars. He didn’t hesitate to take credit for essentially saving movie theaters by waiting two years to release the film instead of dumping it on streaming as many in the business were urging him to do. He told Kimmel he would have held out for 10 years if he had to, and as the host pointed out, he was proven “a billion and a half dollars right.”
As for the stunts that Cruise has become known for, he humbly told the host, “I just try to do everything I can, use every tool that I have, to entertain the audience,” explaining that since he was a little kid he has been nearly killing himself just for the thrill of it.
“Does your stunt double think you’re his stunt double?” Kimmel asked, to which Cruise smiled and replied, “I don’t have a stunt double.”
And yet while Cruise is allowed to jump off a cliff on a motorcycle on screen, he lamented the fact that for insurance purposes, he’s not allowed to snowboard, skateboard, or do anything remotely risky in his personal life.
When Kimmel asked the 60-year-old actor if he thinks he’ll still be doing his own stunts at 80, Cruise one-upped him to say he plans on doing them at 100. “I’ve been doing it my whole life,” he reiterated, adding, “To me, it was just normal.”
Ultimately, Kimmel ended his sit-down with Cruise by essentially asking him if there’s anything he wouldn’t do, from parasailing over an active volcano (been there, done that) to getting in a plane piloted by Harrison Ford (“Yeah, I would, I trust Harrison”) to running with scissors.
He didn’t get one no.
