This is a mind boggling stunt if you haven’t seen it. Tom Cruise of Top Gun and Mission Impossible fame rode his motorcycle off a cliff in Norway – not once, but six times in 1 day…and at the age of 60.
“Tom Cruise – he’s an amazing individual. You tell him something and he just locks it in…His sense of spatial awareness, he’s the most aware person I’ve ever met” – Miles Daisher, Base Jumping Coach
Some of you may remember that Tom Cruise has a complicated relationship to dyslexia. He had difficult early history with his father who was abusive.
From MSN:
“I’d try to concentrate on what I was reading, then I’d get to the end of the page and have very little memory of anything I’d read. I would go blank, feel anxious, nervous, bored, frustrated, dumb. I would get angry. My legs would actually hurt when I was studying. My head ached.”
He only began to learn to read when he began using a pictures and diagrams that supported text and broke down complex concepts into simpler parts. He only began to read and then read for pleasure in 1986, when he was 24 years old and Top Gun was released.
“My childhood was extremely lonely. I was dyslexic and lots of kids made fun of me. That experience made me tough inside, because you learn to quietly accept ridicule.”
One challenging aspect for many dyslexic actors and actresses is having to doing cold readings in order to win a part. He persevered and got his first big part at the age of 19. He ultimately learned that taking a mental picture of lines would help him to remember.
Hot on the heels of Top Gun Maverick’s success (more than $1.3 billion), Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning will be released July 2023. Tom Cruise does know how to imagine and execute stunts. He’ll create something exciting to see.
