We’ve all read the headlines surrounding Tom Cruise and his insatiable thirst for death-defying stunts. If he’s not scaling the tallest building in the world or wing walking on an actual aircraft, is it even a Tom Cruise film? But it turns out he isn't the only one who does insane Mission: Impossible stunts. If you can believe it, actress Hayley Atwell can run with the best of them, including the M:I lead. Quite literally.
In a recent conversation with Interview, Hayley Atwell dished on the secret behind all that iconic Tom Cruise running, and also gave fans a look behind how much running prep she did for M:I 7, in her quest to keep up with Cruise. When asked how many miles she had done the day of the interview, she said:
Good question. Currently, I’m running about 30K a week. I did a 5K run this morning and then some Pilates mobility strength training.
The Marvel veteran star says many people on social media thought her prep looked a little like a “medieval torture contraption.” Which is hard to argue with, but that’s just scratching the surface of how far she was willing to push her body in the name of looking fight-ready and going toe to toe with the master of stunt work. She continued:
Article continues belowBut yes, I’ve done my 5K today, I’ve done my Pilates with Sam Eastwood, and what I’ve loved about working with her is that all the training I did had to do with creating physical behaviors that could then be incorporated in any kind of fight sequence or drifting-in-a-car sequence. It wasn’t that we were chasing a particular aesthetic for Grace, my character—it was getting to me to a point where I could be dynamic enough and safe enough to try a ton of different things and see what looked most effective and exciting for the audience.
That is a pretty impressive regimen. And though many, including myself, have been hung up on the speed at which Tom Cruise sprints in films, according to his Dead Reckoning costar, that’s not even the impressive part. She says the Top Gun A-lister has studied the running form and how the body moves, and that, according to her, is what makes him so beautiful to watch sprinting across our screens. It's as if he’s running with “every cell in his body” when he takes off.
What is it that the Cocktail actor is running from? If you ask Atwell, she thinks its pretty funny to imagine a particular type of pursuer. She added:
I imagine he’s probably running away from journalists.
So yes, Tom Cruise is impressive when it comes to running and his stunt work, but he’s far from the only one who has put in the hard work to make an entertaining and successful Mission: Impossible franchise entry. Hayley Atwell could give him, if you’ll forgive the pun, a run for his money.
If you’re looking to revisit some of the best running sequences ever captured for the cinema, both Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning and Final Reckoning, featuring Atwell, are available for streaming with a Paramount+ subscription.
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