Cruising for trouble: 'My part in Hitler's downfall' by Tom Cruise

Even when you're trying to kill Hitler, playing at Nazis is still a dangerous game. Tom Cruise exclusively reveals the perils of filming WWII thriller Valkyrie - and why Scientology should never have been part of the controversy

A bungalow suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel is salmon pink, oak-floored and costs $1,200 a night. The one I’m sitting in also has an incongruous open fireplace, a Yamaha grand piano and french doors leading to a private garden, which is bathed in winter sunshine.

‘Hey!’ shouts Tom Cruise as he steps in to join me.

Scroll down below to watch the trailer to Valkyrie...

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'I grew up wanting to kill Hitler', says Tom Cruise who plays Count Claus von Stauffenberg in Valkyrie, the true story of a group of German officers who plotted to assassinate Hitler in 1944

‘I’ve been in this suite before! Katie and me stayed in this very room! Just a night in a hotel. We had a great time. Yes, this place brings back memories.’
I don’t know what is more remarkable; one of the world’s most iconic actors arriving bang on time, or talking about a memorable night in a hotel room with his wife Katie Holmes, or inspecting my tape machine helpfully to make sure it is working, or serving me drinks.
‘A water? OK, coming up,’ he says, grabbing a bottle from a sideboard ludicrously overstocked in readiness to satisfy Cruise’s every whim.
You don’t really need an introduction – Tom Cruise has dominated movies since Risky Business in 1983. Highlights include three Mission Impossibles, Jerry Maguire, Top Gun, Rain Man and... well, pretty much every other monster hit of the past 20 years. And of course there’s been relationships with Nicole Kidman and Scientology along the way…
He’s 46 now, and looks in remarkably good shape. Dressed in blue jeans with black boots and a bright white T-shirt peeping out from under a dark-green, cabled crew neck, he is only 5ft 7in but has an indefinable presence that fills the room.
He’s unfailingly polite, has a deep voice that laughs easily, and during our hour or so banishes mobiles and agents.

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'I've done controversial films before,' says Tom

‘Hey man, how are you? How was your trip over from the UK?’
Cruise is an Anglophile, something that crops up throughout our conversation.
‘I must have been 11 when I first went to Britain,’ he says. ‘It was during some kind of anniversary. I can remember being in Hyde Park when all these wartime planes flew over – Spitfires. It was fantastic.
'When I was growing up we lived in lots of different places and were constantly moving. I had two photographs that were all I cared about. Not my clothes, my toys, anything – just these two pictures.
'One was of a Spitfire and the other a B-17 (the Flying Fortress bomber). I’ve always loved the beauty of those aircraft and what they stood for. They meant a lot to me. I’ve always been fascinated with that period.
‘A friend of mine, who drives me when I’m in London, told me stories of when he was a kid during the war. How they would go down into the subway when the city was bombed.
'He drove me to the area in the East End where he grew up and showed me around. He said one of the things that he remembered about the bombing was that when it happened, they didn’t have to go to school. I always loved those stories.’

Tom as aristocratic German officer Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg

It is this fascination that makes his next film more personal than most; and the knowledge it has brought – born of almost obsessive research – has given him some defence against the swelling controversy. Valkyrie, the first big film release of 2009, is the true story of a group of senior German officers who plotted to assassinate Hitler in 1944.
Cruise plays aristocratic German officer Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg, who led the plot and bears an uncanny resemblance to Cruise.
So far, Cruise has been savaged by one of von Stauffenberg’s family and a leading anti-Scientology German politician, and the producers were almost denied permission to shoot by a sceptical German government.
Cruise is unfazed. He was aware any story showing ‘good Germans’ would hit the headlines.
‘I knew it would be controversial. We’ve never seen this perspective before. But I couldn’t ignore it because the story is so compelling – it’s about trying to bring down the greatest evil in the world from the inside. That makes for a fantastic thriller.
‘And I’ve done controversial films before. With Rain Man they were hanging Dustin Hoffman and me out to dry.
'With Interview With The Vampire (author) Anne Rice took out a full- page ad against me taking the part.

I knew it would be controversial but I couldn't ignore it because it's about bringing down the greatest evil in the world - from the inside

'When I did Eyes Wide Shut with Kubrick it was controversial. There have always been these things. But I like challenging roles.’

Stauffenberg was a career military man and a charismatic war hero who joined the army in 1926, long before the Nazis rose to power. Unlike most German soldiers, he had long believed that Hitler had to be stopped.
Von Stauffenberg became a key member of the German Resistance movement and the major player in the infamous attempt to blow up Hitler on July 20, 1944, with a bomb at the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s secret HQ in Rastenburg, East Prussia.
After assassinating Hitler, the coup plotters intended to replace the Nazi hierarchy by using one of the regime’s own emergency contingency plans, codenamed Operation Valkyrie, against itself (see panel, right). If von Stauffenberg had succeeded, history would have been changed – and millions of lives might have been saved.
‘I grew up wanting to kill Hitler,’ Cruise says of his suitability for the part.
‘As a kid I would run around with a pretend gun playing games, acting out the war films we watched on TV. It was like, “Who is going to be the Nazi?” And it was never me. I always wanted to be the one who was going to get them.
‘And here is a story, Valkyrie, that so many people don’t know about. It’s a classic story of the human spirit. They were really brave men who were trying to do something, trying to make a stand, and that’s epic.’

Cruise read voraciously: The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, Stauffenberg: A Family History, and as much Mein Kampf as he could manage.
‘It’s not very well written,’ says Cruise.
‘Stauffenberg commented in his writings on what rubbish it is. He couldn’t believe that Hitler got elected.
'To him it was poorly written, almost illiterate. I looked at some of that stuff and decided, “What do I need to read all of that garbage for?” For me, the key was Stauffenberg and understanding his journey.’
Cruise also watched extensive footage from World War II, including home movies shot by Hitler’s lover Eva Braun, and The World At War, the British series narrated by Laurence Olivier.
‘We watched it all the time, even between takes on set. It’s an extraordinary documentary series. I first watched it when I was only four or five. It stayed with me and I can remember, even back then, being moved by it, wondering about man’s inhumanity to man.’

Von Stauffenberg was a committed family man who had five children. For
Cruise, that was crucial to taking the role.
‘He loved his family passionately and he knew that he was putting them in danger by his own actions. That would have been a terrible burden for him. But he also knew that he had to act, to do something, for the greater good of his country. Of course I can relate to that.’
Cruise is referring to his three children: Isabella, 16, and Connor, 13, both adopted, from his marriage to Nicole Kidman, which ended in divorce after 11 years in 2001, and daughter, Suri, two, from his marriage to Katie Holmes.
‘Being a father informs my performance,’ he says. ‘You have this unbreakable bond with them and that deepens my performance in ways I don’t know if I can articulate.
'Being a father has meant that I started looking more to the future. You ask yourself what the future holds for your children. What can I do to protect them? And that’s how it informs me and the choices I make in my life.’

Tom's remarkable likeness to the real Colonel Von Stauffenberg (left)

During two months filming in Berlin, Cruise, director Bryan Singer and their cast and crew knew how careful  they had to be. Swastikas are banned in Germany and the film-makers had to get special permission from the government to use flags and banners on the exteriors of the buildings they used, including the former Luftwaffe headquarters, which is now the Ministry of Finance, Tempelhof Airport and the Messe Berlin exhibition centre, which was originally built by the Nazis.
‘There were some tense moments with the swastika,’ Cruise recalls.
'Once we were filming at the old Luftwaffe building with the flags up really high and there was a wedding going on nearby. We didn’t realise until one of the party came over and asked us, very politely, if we could take them down. And of course we did.
‘We were never casual about the flags and the uniforms because obviously that’s a very powerful image – it’s an assault.
‘I remember another time an elderly woman came up and told us how her father was a part of the Resistance. He had been arrested and she found out where he was being held and went to see him.
'The guards said, “Don’t bother coming back, you’ll never see your father again.” Then he was executed. There were moving stories all around us. And you realise that not all of the Germans wanted to be a part of the Nazis.’
The ensemble British cast around Cruise form the heart of the Resistance movement. Kenneth Branagh is Major-General Henning von Tresckow, renowned as one of the most unrelenting of Hitler’s secret enemies within the German armed forces.
As early as 1938, Tresckow began seeking out colleagues who opposed Hitler and would form the inner circle of conspirators, including General Friedrich Olbricht (played by Bill Nighy).
In March 1943, von Tresckow and Olbricht planned to blow up Hitler’s plane by smuggling British adhesive mines disguised as two bottles of Cointreau. The bombs were put in the hold, but it was too cold for the fuses and they failed to detonate.
Stauffenberg, who grew up in Bavaria and was descended from 700 years of German nobility, became the focal point for the July 20 plot.
‘He had a strong artistic streak,’ says Cruise. ‘When you research him you find out that he was an educated man – a philosopher, a writer, a poet, someone who believed in morality and mankind and wanted to contribute to society.
'He was very strongly against Hitler and National Socialism and as he progressed through the ranks he began to ask himself, “Why isn’t someone doing something about this? Something has to be done.”’
Playing von Stauffenberg would, though, provide more challenges, both on and off screen. When Singer and Cruise asked the German Government for permission to film at Bendlerblock, the German military headquarters in Berlin where the conspirators planned their coup and where von Stauffenberg was executed, they were refused.

Germany’s Finance Ministry officials were reported to be unhappy with the production using the building because it should be treated as a ‘place of remembrance and mourning’.
Then Antje Blumenthal, an authority on cults for the conservative German Democratic Union and well known opponent of Scientology, claimed that the German defence minister had assured her the film would not be shot there because of Cruise’s high-profile position in Scientology.
And Berthold von Stauffenberg, Claus’s son, said: ‘I fear that only terrible kitsch will come out of the project. It’s bound to be rubbish. Cruise should keep his hands off my father.’
When I raise these issues, Cruise listens attentively, then leans in towards me, anxious to get his point across. German officials, he points out, reversed their decision to bar them from Bendlerblock after learning more about the film.
Indeed, the German Federal Film Fund eventually ploughed £4.7 million into the £56 million budget for the film. And last year Cruise was awarded the prestigious Bambi Award, Germany’s equivalent of a lifetime achievement Oscar.
Even Berthold retracted his statement and said that he would give his verdict on the film once he’d seen it.
‘I met von Stauffenberg’s daughter and his grandsons. That was very useful because of the support and encouragement we received from them. And I know there was that stuff about Bendlerblock but the truth is we got that location and no major film had ever shot there before.
‘And yeah, there’s a really small minority who said that about my religion. Of course people want to talk about that, and there were a couple of people who felt that way about it.
'But most of those things they said just aren’t true.’
Ever the Scientologist, at the end of the interview Cruise suggests I take a press release from the Church Of Scientology with me. Helpfully, one of the PRs hands me a statement, which claims that Scientology has never been banned in Germany, ‘nor have any banning proceedings ever been initiated’.
Obsession to detail with uniforms had its complications, too. Cruise first got dressed up at the first read-through at MGM’s offices in Beverly Hills – steel-grey German military jacket, polished black leather jack-boots, stiff grey breeches: an exact replica of the uniform of Stauffenberg’s WWII field regalia minutely recreated using archive photographs. At which point he needed the loo.
‘There I was, dressed in full German officer’s uniform, walking out of the conference room and down the corridors to get to the bathroom. It was surreal. I could see the guys in the offices looking at me and wondering what the hell was going on.
'And I have to tell you, they had great uniforms, great designs. But there was a perversion with those things. They took symbols that were good and they inverted the aesthetics. My immediate response was, “I hate this uniform.” But I had to get used to seeing myself wearing it, although it was disturbing to look at the world from that perspective.’

The film is based on true events, but Cruise makes the point time and again throughout the interview that it is not a documentary. Yes, they wanted to be as authentic as possible, but it also has to be entertainment.
At the beginning of 1943, while fighting in North Africa with the Tenth Panzer Division, Stauffenberg was severely wounded during an RAF air attack – losing his left eye, his right hand and two fingers from his left hand. Cruise had to play the majority of the film with an eye patch and his hand hidden in a sleeve.
In post-production, Singer used computer trickery to remove one hand and show the other disfigured and scarred.
‘The eye patch was difficult,’ says Cruise. ‘At first it threw my balance off and I would imagine the kind of physical discomfort he had to live with. It was also challenging from a performance point of view; how to communicate as an actor with part of your face gone.’
In the end, the assassination plot failed. Hitler survived the bombing attempt. Within hours, Hitler’s henchmen were back in control and had begun the hunt for the conspirators. That night von Stauffenberg was executed by firing squad. He was 36.
‘I’m not a historian,’ says Cruise, ‘but it obviously would have made a huge difference to the outcome of the war. These men put their own lives, and the lives of their families, at risk. Stauffenberg was under tremendous pressure but he stood up for what he believed was right.’
Before filming started at Bendlerblock, Cruise led the cast and crew in a minute’s silence.
‘It affected all of us to be there. The movie isn’t about us, it’s about representing the spirit of those people. It was a very powerful moment.’
‘Valkyrie’ is out on January 23

HOW THEY PLANNED TO KILL THE FUHRER

The July 20 plot had its roots in the German Army's crushing defeat at Stalingrad, after which some senior officers felt they had a moral duty to remove Hitler as head of the armed forces.
In 1944, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was appointed Chief Of The General Staff Of The Reserve Army, meaning he could attend planning meetings with Hitler.
The plan was to kill the Fuhrer and stage a full blown coup, replacing the Nazis with a government that would negotiate a truce with the Allies.
The method was to subtly alter Operation Valkyrie - the Reserve Army's blueprint for an emergency government in the event of Hitler's death. The idea was to make it look as though Hitler's closest inner circle had killed him.

Nazi leaders inspect the bomb damage, July 1944

On July 20, 1944, von Stauffenberg - called to a briefing at the Wolf's Lair - put the plan into action. Before the meeting, he went to the bathroom to prime a bomb, hidden inside his briefcase. He left the case under the conference table before taking a pre-arranged phone call giving him an excuse to depart the hut.
Soon after he left, the explosion wrecked the interior and he believed Hitler was dead. Racing to a plane, he flew to Berlin to put the rest of the plan into action, ordering the arrest of leading Nazis, claiming they instigated the plot to kill Hitler.
But a few hours later news arrived that Hitler had survived. A staff officer had moved the briefcase to the other end of the hefty table, where a sturdy wooden leg shielded Hitler from the full force of the blast. Shaken, he survived with minor injuries - but the bomb fatally injured four others in the room.
Within hours, the SS were hunting down the plotters. After a brief shoot-out at the Bendlerblock in Berlin, Stauffenberg was captured and, with three other officers, executed quickly by firing squad --ironically on the orders of co-conspirator General Friedrich Fromm (later executed himself).
The relatives of all the conspirators were also arrested, among them Stauffenberg'swife Nina, who was sent to a concentration camp.
In all, more than 5,000 suspects were arrested; 200 were executed over the following weeks.

27 Dresses and one new star can't quite rescue this romcom

Verdict: Katherine Heigl rises above routine chick flick

Had I never seen a romantic comedy before, I might have been more impressed by 27 Dresses, a machine-made product that, like a poorly made bridesmaid's dress,
makes the leading lady look good but falls apart much too rapidly.

Towards the end, as the characters were being made to behave more and more idiotically to fit in with the demands of Hollywood romcom, I was groaning and
longing for it to be over.

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Funny girl: Heigl convinces as the perennial bridesmaid

The main pleasure is the chance to see the emergence of Katherine Heigl (who last impressed in the lads movie Knocked Up) as one of the few leading actresses who can carry a chick flick and give it some authentic feeling.
She manages to be funny and touching as Jane, a selfless elder sister to flaky Tess (Malin Akerman, a Cameron Diaz lookalike).
Always the bridesmaid but never the bride, with 27 bridesmaids¿ dresses to prove it, Jane has to grit her teeth and smile when the boss shes had a crush on for years, a
mountaineering entrepreneur (Edward Burns), falls for her younger sister  and Jane has to arrange the wedding.
You may have spotted that there's a huge flaw in that premise, and its contained in the two dread words 'Edward Burns'.
Back in 1995, writer-director-actor Burns became the great white hope of American indie cinema with his debut, The Brothers McMullen.
But his unique ability to be smug, smarmy and uncharismatic has meant that he has been on the big screen with decreasing frequency. 27 Dresses shows why.
Age has not made him any more interesting, and he remains a charisma-free zone.
This fatally damages the movie.
It makes us wonder if our lovely heroine is really as smart as she appears (how can she be when she defines her happiness through her relationship with this self-satisfied dork?), and removes any tension as to whether he and she end up together.
As Burns¿ star has waned, so James Marsden¿s has ascended. Through a series of flashy character roles in X-Men, The Notebook and Superman Returns, culminating in
his hilariously thick Prince Edward in Enchanted, he has established himself as handsome but sparky: a Tom Cruise  lookalike, but with a sense of humour.
Marsden puts a lot of energy into playing Kevin, a newspaper reporter who¿s cynical about marriage but writes beautifully about weddings.
The only two sequences which truly come alive in 27 Dresses are where Heigl
shows off her hideous dresses, and she and Marsden get drunk and sing in a bar- and even these are based on equivalent sequences in Pretty Woman and My Best
Friend's Wedding.
But the formula-reliant screenplay requires Kevin to do such sneaky, creepy things that
not even Marsden's charm can convince us he's worthy of Jane.
And then she starts behaving so spitefully and stupidly that she forfeits our sympathy as well.
The film is being advertised as from the writer who brought you The Devil Wears Prada - but Aline Brosh McKenna's script is more of a throwback to her first two,
highly forgettable romcoms, Three To Tango (1999) and Laws Of Attraction (2004).
Some of 27 Dresses is frothy and fun. Too much is leaden, cliched and predictable, including almost the whole of its second half.

Mission Impossible 4: It's not deep or meaningful... but the stunts are pretty awesome

Brad Bird made his name with two brilliant animated films, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Mission Impossible 4 is his first live-action film, and it confirms that he  is a first-rate director.
There are three sequences here – a break from a Russian prison, a hazardous climb up the tallest building in the world in Dubai, and a climactic fight in an automated multi-storey car park in Mumbai – that rank among the best not just of the year, but of all time.

It's not deep or meaningful: But Tom Cruise's latest movie Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is packed with some awesome stunts

It’s these that make Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol superior to the other films in this series, and very much worth the price of admission. See it, if you can, on an Imax screen, where the stunts are breath-taking.

 

The story, regrettably, is a routine affair that never departs from formula. Yet another madman is intent on bringing about a world war. He’s called Kurt Hendricks, and is played uninterestingly by Michael Nykvist.
Apparently, this nutter’s belief is that only when the world has succumbed to nuclear annihilation will there be lasting peace. It’s a miracle this guy can get anyone to be his homicidal henchmen.

Action packed: Tom Cruise 's hazardous climb up the tallest building in Dubai is particularly breathtaking

Hendricks blows up the Kremlin and pins the blame on America - more specifically agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team (Simon Pegg and Paula Patton).
After the death by explosion of their boss (Tom Wilkinson), Hunt and co know they are on their own as rogue agents though, as usual in this series, they never seem to suffer from any shortage of money or hi-tech gadgetry.
Major faults remain from the first three pictures. Ethan Hunt must be the blandest, most boring action hero in modern cinema.
The shape of the screenplay and cheesy attempts at flippant wisecracks are familiar from too many Bond films, and it’s curious to see a modern film still peddling a view of Russian-American relations that dates from the Cold War.
No one’s going to pretend this film is deep or meaningful but, at its best, it really is pretty awesome.

Mission Impossible 4 goes on general release on Boxing Day.

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz show off their impressive football skills - but are they real or just Hollywood make-believe?

With footie skills like these, the American team should have called on the talents of Hollywood actors  Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz for last weekend's game.
In a YouTube video that is burning up the internet, Cruise and Diaz show off an impressive array of moves and some very firm ball control.
The two actors, who shot the video during a break from filming their upcoming action thriller Knight And Day, are shown kicking the ball around between each other before showcasing some moves that would make Cruise's good pal David Beckham proud.

Ball control: Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz show off their enviable football skills on the set of their new movie Knight And Day

Cruise is seen balancing the ball on one foot before flicking it onto his back, flipping it forward and bouncing it on his knees before kicking it to Diaz.
Not to be outdone, the actress displays her World Cup-worthy moves - catching the ball on her chest, balancing it on one foot, flicking it over her head and balancing it on her back before kicking it back to Cruise.

Over to you: Diaz receives the ball from Cruise, balancing it on her chest before flicking it back to him

Action shot: Diaz is caught mid back kick to Cruise, but when it comes to the actors' footie skills is it all a case of too good to be true?

But it turns out that Landon Donovan need not worry too soon about being replaced on the squad - Diaz revealed that the soccer skills were all courtesy of the wonders of modern technology, namely CGI.

Daredevil:  Tom Cruise shows off some of his motorcycle moves in Seville earlier today

'It was choreographed,' Diaz said. 'We had to act like there was a ball in between us - that we were playing around with and then we had to sell that and then they put the ball in afterwards.'
 The end result is pretty impressive - so impressive in fact that even Cruise's close friend, David Beckham was fooled.
Cruise revealed: 'I showed it to Beckham. All of his mates - they were all over there and I just kind of threw it on, and I was like, "Yeah I play a little football."
'I put it on, they were like, "WHAT!" They're looking at it, " What! What! Come on!" I went through it quickly and I was like, "What do you think?"'
If you want to enjoy Cruise and Diaz's more obvious acting skills you can check out Knight And Day when it's released in the UK on July 2.

(Not so) risky business: How Tom Cruise's impressive-looking stunts are made easier than they seem

 Clinging on for dear life,   Tom Cruise desperately holds on to a car bonnet as Cameron Diaz drives it down the street at breakneck speed... at least that's what the director wants you to think.

But this is a stunt sequence from their action-comedy Wichita, where nothing is quite what it seems.

Get off my car: Cameron Diaz and an action sequence in Wichita but it's not quite this simple

Look below at our more loosely cropped picture and you will see the bigger picture.
Although Ms Diaz is behind the wheel of the black Cadillac, this is just a dummy car covering the actual low-lying vehicle.

Peering out underneath Tom's flailing legs is the real stunt driver wearing a crash helmet and all around them are lights, cameras and a host of gadgets and film tools.

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Cruise and Diaz perform a scene from their new film Wichita. But look closer under Tom's legs and you will see the actual stunt driver who is controlling the vehicle as it swerves

Intrigued, MailOnline asked stunt co-ordinator and performer Steve Truglia, who designs and arranges shots for movies, TV shows and commercials, to cast an expert eye over our pictures from the Cruise/Diaz set in Boston.
He pinpointed the uses of each piece of equipment and the information he passed on is fascinating - not just to film geeks.
'The very reason for this elaborate set-up is to make it look real,' said Mr Truglia.
'A lot more movement can be captured using this technique.'
Traditionally in car chase scenes, the car is placed on the back of a low loader trailer. In this case a specially designed low loader has been set up with a dummy car at the front, allowing a stunt driver to control the vehicle from underneath.

'The advantage of this method is that cameras can be placed in a variety of angles showing the artist on the bonnet, the artist driver and the background moving past in a realistic manner as the whole mechanism drives down the road,' Mr Truglia said.
'It looks like the stunt driver is providing sideways swerving by driving the wheels which are on the road behind the low loader. This allows shots of the car apparently skidding all over the road.'
Although making up just seconds of footage, the expensive stunt scenes can take weeks to prepare and film.
'In most cases, storyboards are drawn up so that everybody knows exactly what the director wants to see,' the British stunt co-ordinator said.
'Then the stunt co-ordinator offers safe solutions to the director. Given the budget, we can achieve almost anything visually without hurting anyone.

Tom Cruise prepares to stand up next to a dog co-star as his car in driven by a stunt driver behind a film truck...

... Look closer and you'll see the dog has been replaced by a puppet as Tom Cruise clambers over the top of the moving vehicle. He is supported by wires at the back.

'Where the action is potentially dangerous for the artist, we use stunt performers to test the limits of what's safe. In this case a stunt double would have ridden the rig to determine the likelihood of the artist falling off the bonnet.
'A location manager will oversee the pre-arranged use of the public highway, often with police blocking roads off. Medics will be on standby in case of an accident.'
Only then can the cameras start to roll for real. The action can be shot anything from one to dozens of time, depending on lighting issues, dialogues glitches and background noise.
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The low loader would travel up to 60mph in a straight line or 30mph during swerves, according to expert stunt co-ordinator Steve Truglia

Although it looks risky, Tom Cruise has very little chance of falling off the car. He would be secured to the vehicle by wires and a harness, which is digitally removed in post production.
'For this kind of shot I would probably set a maximum of 30mph with swerving and up to 60 driving in a straight line on a completely locked off road,' Mr Truglia said.
'I would insist on safety wires. I notice that in one picture the bonnet seems to have some stuck on grippy patches to reduce Tom's sideways movement.'
A lot of clever editing follows with cuts between close-ups showing the artists, wider shots of an actual car with stunt doubles on the bonnet and the action in the context of the street.
'It is usually very expensive to create stunt shots,' Mr Truglia said.
'You have the specialist building of dummy cars, special effects people, stunt people, and the extra time taken to do something like this whilst keeping everybody safe.
'It is a huge team effort to make a great movie and everyone plays their part.'

Steve Truglia specialises in designing and arranging stunt action sequences on any scale. For more information visit his website www.prostunts.net

But whoever said Tom doesn't take risks...

Far from shirking danger duties, Tom Cruise has had his fair share of on-set thrills.
In Mission: Impossible II, for example, he insisted on doing his own stunts on motorbikes and cars - and one memorable 'knife-on-eyeball' sequence.
The scene involved a fight between him (as Ethan Hunt) and the villain Sean Ambrose, played by Dougray Scott. 

Watch out: That's Cruise's actual eye very near a real knife

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Don't look now: Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) (L)  tussles with Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) (R)

Cruise insisted that a real knife be used - and that it stop precisely one quarter of an inch from his eyeball, against the wishes of director John Woo.
The weapon itself was connected to a wire that was carefully measured to achieve the effect.
Now that's what we call risky business.