Hollywood legend, stuntman and helicopter pilot Tom Cruise has been ticked off by a TV nun.
Actress Jenny Agutter, who plays Sister Julienne in the long-running TV drama Call the Midwife, has fired a verbal broadside at the cinematic legend.
Agutter accused Cruise of disturbing her and fellow cast and crew on the hit TV show, which is filmed at Surrey’s Longcross Studios.
The 60-year-old Hollywood star returns as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two, which is being filmed at the same studio.
Cruise, who has his pilot’s licence, often flies in and out of the Surrey site – and that’s the problem for the Call the Midwife crew.
“Tom Cruise keeps on ruining our filming by landing his helicopter right outside where we’re shooting,” Argutter said tongue-in-cheek at last week’s TV Choice Awards.
Argutter said the TV crew had regularly had to reshoot scenes ruined by the noise from Cruise’s helicopter. In comments reported by Britain’s Mirror newspaper, Argutter was asked if she planned to give the Hollywood A-lister a ticking-off.
“In my habit! Imagine. ‘Excuse me Tom, but look we’re trying to film. I don’t know about you, but just get your helicopter out of here quickly’!’,” she said.
Cruise learned to fly a helicopter in 2017 for a stomach-churning stunt in Mission Impossible: Fallout.
He returned to it back in May for a dramatic arrival at the Top Gun: Maverick premiere in San Diego. Cruise arrived in a black helicopter, touching down on a US Navy carrier before stepping out clad in a suit, tie and aviator sunglasses, to wild cheers from assembled fans.
“He flies a P-51 in the movie and he flies helicopters. He can do just about anything in an airplane,” Top Gun: Maverick producer Jerry Bruckheimer told Empire Magazine.
The superstar is also known for performing many of his own stunts. In 2020, dramatic footage emerged of him riding atop a moving train in Norway for a Mission Impossible stunt.
A month ago, it was revealed that Cruise’s next plans were out of this world – literally.
He has teamed up The Bourne Identity director Doug Liman for a Universal Pictures project that involves him flying and filming outside the International Space Station.
“Tom Cruise is taking us to space. He’s taking the world to space. That’s the plan,” Universal Pictures chairman Donna Langley told the BBC.
“Taking a rocket up to the space station and shooting and hopefully being the first civilian to do a spacewalk outside of the space station.”
Argutter, meanwhile, has been a part of BBC1’s Call the Midwife since 2012. She appeared in Marvel’s Avengers Assemble that same year, and had a role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier in 2014.
“I’d love to go back to Marvel again, that would be fun. I really want to get involved with the stunts,” she said.