Being a stuntman is one of the hardest gigs in all of Hollywood. Cliff Booth from “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” might say it’s easy given that he’s a war hero and all but that’s a fictional character.
Some actors do their own stunts but as Rick Dalton says in “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” falling off a horse and getting hurt can have an “undue pressure” on production because they have to stop filming.
And one Avengers star gives all credit to Tom Cruise for her stunt work in her new show “Stumptown.”
Jackie Chan was the first mainstream actor who did all of his own stunt work and took Hollywood by storm with his independent Hong Kong feature “Rumble in the Bronx.” There was a point in that movie where Keung (Chan) jumped from a dock onto a tugboat and actually broke his leg.
Instead of halting production, he finished the movie in a walking boot.
As far as American actors are concerned; nobody does their own stunts quite like Tom Cruise. He’s the stuntman G.O.A.T.
Cruise insists on doing his own stunts when working on films. In fact, Cruise insists on it so much that he doesn’t get paid until principal photography is wrapped because he’s virtually uninsurable when he does “Mission: Impossible.” Paramount holds his salary until its over.
In “Mission Impossible – Fallout,” Cruise broke his leg jumping from a building window onto a scaffold and that held production for six weeks.
One infamous story about Cruise as stuntman was the BMW car-flipping scene in “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” where the producers/directors let the billion dollar actor perform the stunt because – and get this – he was the most qualified person on set to execute it. That’s not a joke.
Cruise has become somewhat of a mentor to a lot of people in stuntman-land.
One of those people is Cobie Smulders who plays Maria Hill in the Marvel Universe and was most recently featured in “Spider-man Far from Home.”
Smolders’ a new ABC show called “Stumptown” where she plays a wise-cracking Army veteran turned private investigator. And she credits Cruise with mentoring her through the process.
The 37-year-old actress explained to reporters during the Television Critics Association summer press tour promoting “Stumptown” that Cruise showed her the ropes in the high-action drama.
She said, “Yeah, I mean when I worked with Tom [Cruise] on ‘[Jack] Reacher,’ that was when I learned the most I had up until then about training, about fighting, about stunts, about how to do everything safely because he was such a pro at just doing everything correctly and really well.”
It’s a rather entertaining show and its quite obvious Smulders is incredible at stunt work right from the get-go.
She also plays the part of a smart-ass well too and you know this is obvious about her from Smulders’ work on “How I Met Your Mother.”
Smulders noted, “I just like her. I like the way that she rolls with however she’s feeling, you know. I like playing sort of a sexually ambiguous woman on network television. I like that she’s sort of her own boss. I like that she just doesn’t really have – there are no rules for her. So that excited me. So it’s usually her humor is coming situationally. But I think that there will be opportunities. For there’s a lot of physical comedy but then also just really funny lines.”
It’s nice to see Cruise taking in interest in up-and-comers with stunt work because he’s too gifted not to.