Tom Cruise in actionParamount Pictures

Tom Cruise is celebrated for doing all his own stunts on the sets of his action movies. Now Mission: Impossible actress Hayley Atwell has shared that her co-star and producer was also fulfilling a lifelong dream.

Atwell told The Guardian newspaper that improvisation by the cast was encouraged on the Mission: Impossible set – she came up with the idea of her character Grace being a pickpocket, which was incorporated into the script. Audiences of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One saw Cruise plunge over a cliff on his bike and Atwell explained:

“There’ll be Tom going: ‘From five years old I’ve always wanted to jump from a cliff on a motorbike’, and realising his dream. But with the rest, they’re kind of making it up as they go.”

Atwell has been with the Mission: Impossible team for five years, and says actors like Cruise “aren’t made like him anymore.”

She explained: “When I started, I was very aware of the rarefied air around him and how there is no one like him. And there never will be because actors aren’t made like him anymore. He is a one-man studio and, to me, very kind, very professional. And because of that, I felt I was able to try lots of different things. There was never a risk of failure or being unsafe. Tom really likes people to thrive on set.”

And she added that, even though filming on the final Reckoning movie, scheduled for release in May, finished last year, the perfectionist Cruise and his team are still doing reshoots, “fleshing out scenes or changing things around. They’re always tinkering and looking to make things better.”