Tom Cruise Reveals Which 'Mission Impossible' Stunt Almost 'Broke His Back': 'That Was Brutal'

Tom Cruise keeps raising the bar with his own stunts — though he revealed some left him dangerously close to disaster.

In a bonus feature for the digital release of Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the 63-year-old action legend opened up about one jaw-dropping moment that almost pushed him past his limit.

As a clip rolled of Cruise dangling off a biplane with nothing but a seatbelt strap to hold onto, he confessed, “Oh, this almost broke my back.”

Director Christopher McQuarrie didn’t hold back either, telling him, “You’re talking about a lot of pain here.”

Pointing to the footage, McQuarrie added, “Now watch this: The thing we haven’t talked about, holding on to this belt.”

In the scene, Cruise clung to the strap as the plane flipped upside down.

Cruise admitted, “Oh God, that was brutal.”

According to McQuarrie, the move was so intense that it actually separated the joints in Cruise’s fingers.

“By the time we finished this sequence, your hands were absolutely swollen — oh my God, it was so painful to watch,” he told the Top Gun star.

To make it even harder, Cruise explained that the team had to film the sequence in Africa twice due to brutal weather conditions.

“And once you shot it for real, there was no way to fake it,” McQuarrie added.

The director, who filmed the scene from a helicopter, praised both his crew’s “great camera operating” and the pilot who kept the plane steady.

Things only got scarier when the engine suddenly cut mid-scene, sending Cruise’s body slamming against the plane.

“That was a hard one,” he admitted, saying that part of the moment was improvised.

It was also Cruise’s idea to stab through the side of the plane mid-flight.

"This was really fun,” he said, reassuring fans that “all real” meant no green screens or shortcuts.

As OK! previously reported, Cruise also spoke about another dangerous sequence during his appearance on The Tonight Show. The extended underwater driving scene from The Final Reckoning nearly caused him to lose his vision because of the reflection from the lights.

“So, I would go in, kind of blind, spend a lot of time on the set figuring out [the movement] as we’re figuring out the shots,” Cruise said. “Then, when I’m doing it, I have a hard time. Plus the suit, when it’s wet, increases in weight by about 125 pounds. So, the kind of workouts and things that I have to do just to prepare for these things, it’s years of development. And yeah, and I’m producing it, so it’s also that kind of thing.”

To top it off, he admitted he had to breathe in his own carbon monoxide at times while filming underwater.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Cruise has risked his life for a movie.

In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, he performed his now-famous motorcycle stunt — riding off a cliff, launching into the air and parachuting to safety. The scene required over 500 hours of skydiving and 13,000 motorcycle jumps.

“The work that went into the motorbike shot was incredible,” recalled Skydive Langar’s Karen Saunders, who trained him. “We were all very nervous and, the moment he launched, everyone went quiet until the parachute opened. You don’t want to be known as the person that killed a major A-list star!”

Years before that, he stunned the world by climbing Dubai’s 163-floor Burj Khalifa for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

Cruise called it “a beautiful sequence,” but admitted he only had one night to rehearse on the actual building before filming. With just gloves and a harness, he scaled the tallest building in the world like it was nothing.