In 2017's "The Mummy," Cruise finds himself stuck in a cargo plane as it crashes. To pull off a scene like this, actors would typically film it in a controlled setting like a sound stage surrounded by a green screen.

Not Cruise, though.

The star shot the scene in a plane that NASA uses to train astronauts.

The scene was filmed in the plane which had to go up to 25,000 feet to get the look that Cruise was in zero gravity. The plane then did a free fall for 22 seconds.

Cruise did the flight four times to pull off the scene.

For the thrilling helicopter-chase scene in the finale of "Fallout," Cruise spent 16 hours a day training to get to the required 2,000 hours to fly a helicopter on his own.

But Cruise didn't just fly the helicopter. He also pulled off a 360-degree corkscrew dive in it, which would challenge even the most veteran pilot.

When you see Cruise and the cast looking like they are battling G-forces in the jets, complete with distorted faces, it's because they really were.

Cruise and the cast went through training so their dogfight scenes could look as realistic as possible — which meant sitting in the F/A-18 jets as they were spun around and took dramatic dives.

The 2024 Paris Olympics closing ceremony went big on the Americana to mark Los Angeles hosting the 2028 games, with Cruise pulling off a stunt straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster.

He jumped off the roof of the Stade de France and descended into France's national stadium in front of thousands in a stunt that blurred the lines between himself and the daring characters he's known for playing. 

When Cruise got to the stage, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Olympian gymnast Simone Biles gave him the Olympic flag. After it was attached to a motorbike, the actor drove out of the stadium to start the flag's journey to America. He was later shown jumping out of a plane and turning the Hollywood sign into the Olympic rings. 

They're not the most extreme stunts of Cruise's career, but perfectly captures his showmanship.

In the opening scene of 2000's "M: I 2," Cruise is seen climbing a cliff. And yes, that's really him.

Cruise scaled the cliff in Utah with nothing but a safety rope. He also did a 15-foot jump from one cliff to another.

In one scene, Cruise's Ethan Hunt has to dive into an underwater safe to retrieve the computer chip that will lead him closer to the villain.

Along with having to hold his breath the whole time, he must keep away from a large crane that's circling around the safe.

For the scene, Cruise first jumped off a 120-foot ledge. Then, in a 20-foot deep-water tank, Cruise held his breath for six minutes.

Tom Cruise loves to run in his movies; it's become his trademark. But his ability to continue running came into question after a stunt went wrong on the set of "Fallout."

While jumping from one building to another, Cruise hit the wall of the building the wrong way and broke his ankle.

The accident halted production for months and doctors told Cruise his running days might be over. But, six weeks later, Cruise was back on set doing sprints.

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest building in the world, and Cruise climbed it.

For "Ghost Protocol," the actor's climb got him up to 1,700 feet in the air.

He also fell four stories down by rappelling on the surface of the building.

For the latest "M:I" movie, Cruise once again pushed himself.

And one stunt in particular is definitely up there as one of his craziest ideas yet: driving a motorcycle off a cliff.

The star did 500 skydives and over 13,000 motocross jumps to prepare for the stunt. And that wasn't just so Cruise had the skill and comfort to pull off the stunt; the training also made it possible for director Christopher McQuarrie and his crew to map out camera angles to capture it. 

The stunt was then done on the first day of principal photography.

"We know either we will continue with the film or we're not. Let's know day one!" Cruise told "Entertainment Tonight" on why it was done on the first day.

Cruise ended up doing the stunt six times on the day of shooting.

Cruise clung to the side of a massive Airbus A400M plane as it took off and went up to 1,000 feet dealing with speeds of 100 knots.

To protect the actor, he was secured with a wire attached to the plane. He also had special contacts on to protect his eyes from debris.

Cruise did this stunt eight times.

In the climax of "The Final Reckoning," Hunt holds on to a biplane during takeoff, before eventually punching its pilot, throwing him out of the vehicle, and climbing into another plane being flown by the villain, Gabriel (Esai Morales).

The ambitious nature of the scene is what we've come to expect from Cruise, but seeing him cling on for dear life above the valleys of South Africa is nothing short of astounding.

Yes, he was strapped to the two different vehicles during multiple takes to achieve the sequence, but watching it unfold on the big screen is still breathtaking.

While Cruise was healing the broken ankle he sustained earlier in the "Fallout" production, he went and pulled off the most amazing stunt he's done in his career so far.

In the movie, Cruise's character and CIA tagalong August Walker (Henry Cavill) decide to do a HALO jump — a high-altitude, low-open skydive, in which you open your parachute at a low altitude after free-falling for a period of time — out of a giant C-17 plane to get into Paris undetected.

Cruise did this for real by executing the jump 106 times over two weeks, many of them done during golden hour, a very brief period of perfect lighting that occurs just before sunset.

Anderson came out of nowhere to wow audiences in 2024 with her performance in "The Last Showgirl" as Shelly, a 57-year-old Vegas showgirl who hits a crossroads when the French-style revue she's performed in for three decades closes its doors.

Mixing a coquettishness reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe with a crushing vulnerability no one knew she could pull off, Anderson delivers the best performance of her career. Sadly, she won't be recognized for it on Hollywood's biggest night.

Reznor and Ross masterfully captured the messy dynamic between Tashi (Zendaya), Patrick (Josh O'Connor), and Art (Mike Faist) in their pulsating "Challengers" score, while also providing a techno backdrop for all the tennis matches and relationship warfare.

Throbbing tracks like "The Signal," "Brutalizer," and "Match Point" worked perfectly next to the cinematography to yank the audience through the screen and onto the court.

It's impressive for a score to be so engaging while also delivering pure bangers that could fit right in at an underground rave — which might've livened up the Oscars if the academy had been bold enough to recognize Reznor and Ross' work.

Jean-Baptiste didn't just give the best female performance of the year in "Hard Truths" — she gave the best performance, period. The angry, depressed Pansy Deacon in "Hard Truths" could have easily become a caricature in the hands of a lesser actor, as the miserable woman lashes out, often in absurd ways, at anyone and everyone who crosses her path. But Jean-Baptiste instilled humanity and even evoked sympathy in the unlikeable character with her layered performance.

She and the director Mike Leigh, who directed Jean-Baptiste to her first Oscar nomination almost 30 years ago in "Secrets & Lies," were tapping into something we never see represented on screen. They both should have been acknowledged for it, but Jean-Baptiste was the more egregious snub, particularly since she swept nearly all the critic and indie awards where she was nominated.

Borisov plays the sensitive henchman Igor in "Anora" with a disarming calmness opposite the outlandish antics of the movie's lead, Mikey Madison.

His quiet-guy act left a mark on not just audiences but members of the academy.

Borisov's nomination is the first time in almost five decades that a Russian actor has been nominated for an Oscar. The last was Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1977 for "The Turning Point."

Though "The Apprentice" got little marketing and most of Hollywood didn't want to touch the movie after its premiere at last year's Cannes Film Festival, Stan's performance as Trump made it to the big dance.

Stan is convincing as a young Trump trying to build his real-estate empire under the tutelage of the lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), getting the mannerisms down and even giving his character a sense of empathy.

The academy has historically been reluctant to award Oscars to horror movies. While things have started to look up in recent years — Jordan Peele broke through with "Get Out" — the amount of love "The Substance" got this year is pretty astounding.

Demi Moore was deservedly a lock for best actress with her raw performance as the washed-up celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle. It's thrilling to see her get this recognition for the first time after decades in the business.

It's more surprising, though, that the French director Coralie Fargeat landed first-time nominations for both directing and writing the outrageous body-horror film and that the movie itself got a best-picture nod. It's a watershed moment for the genre.