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Tom Cruise became so good at stunts he literally forgot how to breathe

Tom Cruise is incredibly dedicated to perfecting action movie stunts, but he got so good at holding his breath that he once forgot how to breathe

Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible - Fallout

We all know how much Tom Cruise loves to put his body on the line with his action movie work, and the actor has mastered at the art of performing big stunts in his films. Turns out, he got so good at holding his breath when making Mission: Impossible – Fallout that he ended up forgetting to breathe in his every day life.

Over the years, particularly in the Mission Impossible franchise, we have seen Cruise running along the tallest building in the world, hanging on to the side of a plane, and doing a HALO jump. In Top Gun 2, Cruise pushed himself and the rest of the Top Gun cast to the limits when it came to flying the fighter jets, too.

During an appearance on the Graham Norton Show a few years back, Cruise revealed he learned to hold his breath for over six minutes at a time, but it had a real impact on his day-to-day life.

“We had these free divers who came in and taught me how to do it, and it is not pleasant. You get to the moment where you train your system to the point where you are now controlling the breath. I have a very low heart rate anyway, which means my body isn’t using as much oxygen, but also we did things to bring the heart rate down lower,” Cruise explained.

“It got to the point where, I’d finish the sequence and I’d be sitting there talking in meetings and I wouldn’t breathe. I realised ‘I am not breathing,’ and I had to turn my autonomic system back on to breathe again… but I’ve done that now, I’m done with that,” Cruise added.

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It just wouldn’t be a Tom Cruise movie without some kind of death-defying stunt, but we do hope he doesn’t take things too far.

If you like crazy stunts, check out our list of the best thriller movies of all time.