Ethan Hawke says he’s ‘angry’ with stunt precedent set by Tom Cruise

For Tom Cruise, death-defying stunts might be par for the course, but Ethan Hawke is “getting angry” by the precedent the action hero has unintentionally set for actors.

Cruise is known for bypassing doubles to performing his own stunts, pulling off wild sequences in the Mission: Impossible franchise, which has variously seen him hang off a plane in mid-air, ride off a cliff on a motorcycle and hold his breath underwater for more than six minutes.

Hawke, who last week received an Oscar nomination for his role in Blue Moon, did his own stunts in forthcoming drama The Weight, but is concerned that some stars feel inferior if they decide against doing the same.

“Tom Cruise has totally changed what's expected for actors,” he told Variety after The Weight premiered at Sundance Film Festival.

“Some part of me is getting angry over the years because everyone somehow feels like they're less if they use a stunt team.”

Hawke continued: “What I liked about our movie is there were no ridiculous stunts. It's human. It's not about things blowing up, so most of the stunts were things we could do. They weren’t superhero things.”

The Weight, set in the 1930s, follows Hawke’s widower, who is tasked with smuggling gold through deadly terrain so he can be granted early release from a work camp. Directed by Padraic McKinley and co-starring Russell Crowe, the film has been receiving rave reviews out of Sundance.

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Stunt teams will finally get their moment in the sun at the Oscars, with the Academy set to introduce a Best Stunt Design category at the ceremony’s 100th anniversary in 2028.

In one breathtaking scene in 2025 Mission Impossible film The Final Reckoning, Cruise dangled off a plane in mid-air – an aerial stunt the actor remembered as “brutal”. During a commentary released to promote the film, he admitted he nearly broke his back when holding onto a seatbelt as the plane turned upside down. Instead, he was left with a painful hand injury.

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“This separated the joints in Tom’s fingers from the force, so by the time we finished this sequence, your hands were absolutely swollen – oh my God, it was so painful to watch,” director Christopher McQuarrie recalled.

Cruise also fainted while filming the scene, with the actor telling Empire: “When you stick your face out [of an airplane], going over 120 to 130 miles an hour, you’re not getting oxygen. So I had to train myself how to breathe. There were times I would pass out physically.”

During production of the film, the actor leapt out of a helicopter 16 times while strapped to a burning parachute, which scored him a place in the Guinness World Records.

“A large part of his success can be chalked up to his absolute focus on authenticity and pushing the boundaries of what a leading man can do. It’s an honour to be able to recognise his utter fearlessness with this new Guinness World Records title,” editor-in-chief Craig Glenday said in a statement at the time.