Cruise is known for performing his own death-defying stunts.

Noted pilot Tom Cruise was seen dangling from an airborne biplane while filming Mission: Impossible 8 in England, spectacular photos obtained by The Daily Mail show. Cruise was photographed on the Oxfordshire set alongside Ozark actor Esai Morales, who returns as the villainous Gabriel from last summer’s Dead Reckoning.

Though no details were made available about the scene in question, it appears that Hunt is piloting the plane when a fight breaks out between himself and Gabriel, launching the IMF agent from the craft.

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Morales, seated in the back of the plane, was seen fighting with Cruise, who was perilously dangling from the open-cockpit plane with little or no apparent safety rigging as it repeatedly flipped upside down. Seated ahead of Morales was a pilot clad in a greenscreen suit, to be removed later and replaced with an empty cockpit.

In other photos, Cruise can be seen standing on the side of the biplane and mounting its wings as it takes off; and Morales is seen conferring with a crew member while wearing what appears to be a parachute. Other shots show a camera helicopter closely shadowing the plane, filming the action.

Cruise, who’s held his pilot license since 1994, is known for his death-defying stunts, which he insists on performing himself. In Dead Reckoning, he made a much-publicized cliff jump on a dirt bike; but this isn’t even the first (or second) time Cruise has clung to an airborne vessel in one of the Mission movies.

2015’s Rogue Nation kicked off with Cruise holding on for dear life to the exterior of a military cargo jet as it lifted off, a stunt shot in real-time with Cruise harnessed to the side of the plane; and in 2018’s Fallout, he performed a HALO jump from a similar aircraft.

You can see the final version of Cruise’s spectacular plane stunt when Mission: Impossible 8 hits cinemas on May 23, 2025.