He’s scaled the world’s tallest building, dangled mid-air from a plane, set records for holding his breath underwater and, when he broke his foot shooting a rooftop parkour scene, just kept on running.
Now Tom Cruise, the 62-year-old movie star committed to a relentless dice with death, will take on his most high-profile hair-raiser to date: rappelling 42 metres (137ft) from the roof of the Stade de France as part of the Olympic Games closing ceremony this month.
The live broadcast will then reportedly cut to prerecorded footage of Cruise zipping through the streets of Paris on a motorbike, then on to a plane bound for California, clutching the Olympic flag all the while.
When he arrives stateside, he disembarks the plane by chucking himself out of the window, before skydiving down to the Hollywood sign. He then passes the flag to assorted athletes, including a cyclist, skateboarder and volleyball player, as they relay it round Los Angeles – the host city for the next games in 2028.
Cruise has been shooting the new Mission: Impossible movie in London and Paris since the new year, and sightings of him speeding around the French capital earlier this summer had been credited to that production.
Likewise, residents of Los Angeles are now so accustomed to his fondness for near-lethal stunts that the sight of Cruise falling from a huge height on to on the Hollywood sign in March raised few eyebrows.
It is believed the actor himself approached the International Olympic Committee and suggested the show-stopping sequence himself, having previously helped carry the torch through LA as part of its relay en route to Athens in 2004.
This year, he has been a regular fixture among the audience at the games, watching the opening ceremony, women’s gymnastics and various swimming contents. Last week, he was inducted as a Knight of the Legion of Honour by French culture minister Rachida Dati.
The closing ceremony of Paris 2024 will be titled Records and promises “new interpretations” and the chance for spectators to go “on a journey through time, both past and future”, according to the organisers. This will include a look back to Ancient Greece, where the games began, despite apparent references to Greek mythology during the opening ceremony being met with a mixed reception. During the ceremony, a singer dressed as Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, appeared alongside drag queens posing in what some said resembled the biblical scene from Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper – a parallel the artistic director later denied.
The closing ceremony on 11 August will feature “world-famous performers” along with “acrobats, dancers and circus artists”. There will be choreography featuring the five rings and a sequence set in a post-dystopian wasteland.
