Tom Cruise is one of those actors who's been living the Hollywood dream since the beginning of his career, as he became one of the highest paid actors in the world at the age of 26 after the success of 'Top Gun' [1986], 'The Color Money' [1986] and 'Rain Man' [1988].
The American actor has been featuring in blockbuster movies ever since, and he's been especially attracted to action or adventure films, so it's no surprising that Cruise is probably best-known for his role as Ethan Hunt in the 'Mission Impossible' series.
The first movie premiered in 1996 and focused on the American spy Ethan Hunt and his mission to uncover the mole who framed him for the murders of his entire IMF team.
The movie was a box office hit, surpassing the opening day record of 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day', and grossing more in its first six days than the previous record holder 'Jurrasic Park'.
Three more movies have followed the first one in the past 15 years, 'Mission: Impossible II' [2000], 'Mission: Impossible III' [2006] and 'Mission: Impossible - Ghost Reacon' [2011], and all have been box office successes. The four films grossed, in total, more than 2 billion dollars worldwide, which makes it one of the most successful franchises in Hollywood history.
The story will be continued this summer - although a sixth installment of the popular franchise is already being planned - when Ethan Hunt assembles his team for their most difficult mission yet and tries to prove the near-mythical Syndicate's existence and bring the organization of assassins and rogues down by any means necessary.
The movie will be entitled 'Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation' and Cruise will once again raise the bar of his adventures, and will be - among other stunts -strapped to the side of an airplane in flight.
Yet, as Cruise explained in an interview recently, his biggest stunt might not have been the airplane scene but an underwater bit for which he had to hold his breath for 6 minutes.
"It's something I have always wanted to do. I have done a lot of underwater sequences but we wanted to create a suspense underwater sequence without cuts. So doing that sequence was really interesting. We're underwater and we're doing breath-holds of 6 to 6 and a half minutes. So I was doing all my training with the other stuff. It was very taxing stuff." - explained the actor.
