Hollywood legend Tom Cruise becomes record holder for his fiery Mission Impossible stunt

Three-time Academy Award nominee Tom Cruise is well-known for his leading-man looks and talented performances, but now the actor has added another stunt-related accolade to his shelf – Guinness World Records titleholder.

With his daredevil personality and roguish charm, the star captivated audiences of the Mission Impossible franchise as his character – spy Ethan Hunt – scaled skyscrapers, rode motorcycles off cliffs, and even hung onto the side of an airplane during flight.

But some Tom Cruise superfans know that the actor is committed to giving his audiences authentic-looking action, so the A-lister actually performs his own stunts for films – whether that be climbing the Burj Khalifa or dangling from a biplane. The Mission: Impossible franchise has thus become synonymous with his name, and his breathtaking dedication to provide audiences with a spectacle worthy of going to the movie theatre.

And the eighth and latest installment of the franchise, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) has truly raised the bar – Tom’s spectacular stunts for the film has just awarded the accomplished athlete with a Guinness World Records title for most burning parachute jumps by an individual. 

The star leapt out of a helicopter 16 times while strapped to a parachute pre-soaked in fuel and lit ablaze, before cutting away the charred remnants of the first chute and safely deploying a backup. No other actor or stuntman has come close to that amount of death-defying drops, and his dedication was rewarded with the record title on 4 June.

“Tom doesn’t just play action heroes – he is an action hero!” said Craig Glenday, Editor-in-Chief of 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 recognize his utter fearlessness with this new Guinness World Records title.”

Cruise and his crew are no strangers to these amazing aerial action shots, especially after Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018), when Tom became the first actor to ever complete a HALO drop (high altitude, low open) on camera. To replicate the feeling of a secret spy mission, the team used an actual military tactic of flying extremely high to 25,000 ft, then dropping Tom, who plummets downwards at 200 MPH to below 2,000 ft before deploying his parachute to sneak into a country without being detected. 

“The audience can tell when something’s been cheated, so it’s important to be doing it all for-real,” said Wade Eastwood, Second Unit Director / Stunt Coordinator for Fallout.

Yet despite the risk, Tom always leaps headfirst into his challenges – the star has been a licensed skydiver for many years, and he completed hundreds of jumps in preparation for his latest stunt. 

Filming for The Final Reckoning took place in Drakensberg, South Africa, and the team spent weeks planning and preparing a sequence where they would take Tom up in a helicopter to a minimum of 7,500 ft before dropping him while attached to a flaming parachute. 

The parachute was pre-soaked in fuel and lit ablaze, and after his life-net incinerated, Tom would cut away the burning fabric and deploy a backup chute to break his landing. But when skydiving from a moving vehicle, time is of the essence – and the parachute could only burn for 2.5 to 3 seconds before completely disintegrating.

With so many moving pieces in play, Tom and the Mission: Impossible crew completed fiery 16 drops in the quest for the perfect action shot. And in some of these jumps, he even has a 50 lb snorri camera rig attached to his body to capture a close-up look of the exhilarating fall. 

The result is a breathtaking scene of a spy – and a very famous face – spiraling into an Icarus-like descent before saving himself at the very last moment from the grips of fate and the cold hard ground.