He’s a self-confessed adrenaline junkie, known for taking on his own daring stunts in his action movies. And last week, Tom Cruise continued to push the limits as he was seen hanging off the side of a plane while filming scenes for Mission Impossible.

But sources have revealed that those close to the actor, 62, who will return to screens as agent Ethan Hunt in the hit movie next year, are becoming increasingly worried for his safety. “Tom seems to think he’s invincible. He’s had his pilot’s licence since 1994 and owns several planes, but this is beyond dangerous what he’s doing and crosses the line,” an insider says.

“A lot of his peers increasingly rely on stunt doubles especially when they get to a certain age, and Tom does do it to a limited capacity, but mostly does his own impossible feats. He pretends to be an action man, but truth of the matter is he’s risking life here and not getting any younger, and loved ones and his adopted kids are especially very worried about him. It’s not just the pride and acting factor, Tom’s also addicted to adrenaline.”

Over the years, Tom has performed a long list of daredevil stunts, including speed-flying down a mountain, driving a motorcycle off a cliff, jumping over buildings and even filming car crashes. He previously admitted that he’s been “doing different stunts” since he was a child, and that once he started his acting career, he wanted to continue performing them to help with the “storytelling”. 

He said, “I feel that [when] acting you’re bringing everything, you know, physically and emotionally, to a character in a story. And I’m able to do it [stunts], and I’ve trained for 30 years doing things like this that it allows us to put cameras in places where you normally are not able to.” And while he confessed that he does feel fear, he insisted, “It’s not that I don’t get scared when I’m doing these things, it’s that I don’t mind being scared.”

Tom has also admitted that he will never get bored of the feeling. “I love acting, I just love it. To be part of stories and create character, I just love it. I love being on a movie set and working with the best. When I’m doing stunt movies you always have some sort of injury. Even with the high-speed car crashes that we had – I never tire of it actually,” he said.

“It’s really fun and I keep thinking about what it’s going to look like and that it’s going to entertain an audience. So it’s fun doing it and trying to figure out, can we do it? How far can we push it? When I start working on a piece of material I get very excited about the potential of doing something that hadn’t been seen before, that I haven’t done before.”

But the stunts haven’t always gone to plan. While filming Top Gun in 1986, his co-star Barry Tubb revealed that Tom almost drowned after parachuting into water, saying, “Cruise came as close to dying as anybody on a set I’ve ever seen.”

In 2003, he was almost involved in another tragic accident when he filmed a fight scene in The Last Samurai using a real sword. Tom and his co-star Hiroyuki Sanada approached each other on mechanical horses, but he reportedly came within an inch of the weapon when the mechanism failed. The Japanese actor explained, “Tom’s neck was right in front of me, and I tried to stop swinging my sword, but it was hard to control with one hand. The film crew watching from the side all screamed because they thought Tom’s head would fly off.”

And while filming a building jump scene in 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Tom got injured and broke his ankle, shutting down production for six weeks. He said at the time, “I knew instantly my ankle was broken and I really didn’t want to do it again so just got up and carried on with the take. I said, ‘It’s broken. That’s a wrap. Take me to hospital,’ and then everyone got on the phone and made their vacation arrangement.”

Unsurprisingly, production companies have also struggled with insuring the actor in the past. After Tom insisted on scaling Dubai’s Burj Khalifa while filming Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol in 2011, the team had to scramble for an insurance company after the first one refused to cover the stunt. But despite the risks and dangers – and warnings from his loved ones – our source says that Tom has no plans to slow down.

“Tom has put his heart and soul into this Mission: Impossible franchise and has always gotten so much credit for doing his own stunts, so for him to admit that he needs to scale it back would feel like a cop out, his ego could never handle it. He’s so intense about everything he does and wants to go down in history as the movie star with no fear, so the more he can push the envelope, the better,” they tell us.

“He’s also extremely defensive about his age, he can’t accept that he’s getting older and is convinced that he’s not losing any abilities and he resents it big time when people imply that he’s past the point of being able to do something. Taking things to further extremes, the way he’s doing now, is all about proving to people that he’s just as fit and capable as ever. He’s still got an amazing body and he makes the point that he’s better than any of the stunt people he could hire for the job, but a lot of people think he’s being pretty delusional because most of these situations he’s putting himself in are scary as hell. He’s hanging off airplanes and jumping off walls and all sorts of dangerous things, one false move and he could end up really badly injured, or worse.  He hasn’t been hurt yet, but everyone in his life is convinced it’s only a matter of time, that he’s tempting fate.”

Our source adds, “They want him to dial it down, learn from people like Daniel Craig, who ended up in the hospital multiple times over his stunts gone wrong. There are plenty of actors, Brad Pitt being one of them, who give a lot of work to stunt people, and no one looks down on the for it. But Tom won’t hear of it, he’s got a real complex and always feels this need to prove himself. Plus, he gets such a rush from riding that knife edge of danger, no way is giving that up without a fight.”