It was one of the most anticipated moments of the closing ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games. Tom Cruise put on a show for the passing of the torch between Paris and Los Angeles: the American actor rappelled from the roof of the Stade de France, before greeting the cheering crowd, grabbing the Olympic flag and getting on a motorbike. Then he headed to the United States with a pre-recorded sequence in which he parachutes out of a plane to land in the megalopolis, near the Hollywood sign.
Stunts that only he knows the secret to and that he did… for free. “We realized we were producing a 15-minute live television show, and so I brought in the person I think is the best in the world to do it,” Casey Wesserman said during the CNBC x Boardroom panel.
“I only do it if I can do it all”
The president of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games assures: the star of Mission Impossible insisted on doing all the stunts himself, and for free. The basic program was supposed to be much simpler, with just one sequence next to the Hollywood sign in which Tom Cruise would have handed over the flag, with the rest being done by a stuntman. “About five minutes into the presentation, he said, ‘I’m in. But I’m only doing it if I can do everything,'” Wesserman revealed.
So Tom Cruise did it all, and fast. Arriving at four in the morning in Los Angeles from London after the end of filming Mission Impossible, The 62-year-old actor first filmed the scene where he gets into a military plane. “He did two jumps. He didn’t like the first one, so he did a second one. Then he flew from Palmdale to the Hollywood sign, filmed from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., then flew back to Burbank airport in the helicopter, from where he flew back to London.”
- RMC Sport
