Lights, camera, Tom Cruise!
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"I just love making movies, I feel very honored to be able to do something I love and something I have never taken for granted. It's a privilege for me to do it," says Tom Cruise.
The star of Top Gun, Rain Man and Mission: Impossible has been in the business for 30 years and is one of the world's best-known actors.
In his new film Knight and Day, which hits theaters in China on Tuesday, the perfectly formed 48-year-old star plays secret agent Roy Miller.
In the movie he leaps rooftops, outmaneuvers bulls on a motorcycle and lands a plane in a cornfield. He seems to be the same young man who would train for 12 hours a day to co-star with Paul Newman in The Color of Money, in 1986.
In Salzburg, Austria, one of the film's most harrowing escape sequences starts on a rooftop, where Miller is trapped and escapes by flying across a yawning abyss high above the city. The crew had only 36 hours to rig, prepare and shoot that scene on a dark, rainy night. Cruise did a controlled fall of more than 30 meters without a harness.
"I looked at the spot where I was supposed to jump off the roof, and I saw this big steel beam, where I was to land," he tells China Daily in a telephone interview. "And it had this thin, little pad on it. I glanced at it and then stunt man Casey O'Neil said, 'It's padded. But that's going to hurt.'"
Cruise did all his own stunts in the film.
"It's challenging for me," he says, "and I think it's more exciting and entertaining for the audience. It adds something to have the camera right there with (Miller) the whole time. Plus, I really enjoy doing it."
In another scene Cruise and lead actress Cameron Diaz are riding a motorcycle on the slick stone roads in the Spanish city of Cadiz, chased by a pack of cars and running bulls. He did the motor stunts himself and jointly organized the choreography.
"I knew it was going to be tricky, but I felt like I could get us through it. Suddenly, I see the guy going 'Ol, ol, ol!' and we felt the ground start shaking," he recalls. "These bulls are coming right at us and I'm revving the engine and we're seeing all these pro-bull runners getting ping-ponged into the walls, and Cameron is hanging on so tight I could barely breathe I just kept thinking, 'Cameron, just hang on. JUST HANG ON!' And I remember, we were looking at each other - like 'Where's the CGI?!'"
The agent role may remind some viewers of Cruise's role in the Mission: Impossible pictures, but Cruise says he is not reprising Ethan Hunt.
"This film is more about the characters and adventure, while in Mission it was more the complexity of the mission," he says. "It is more like Raiders of the Lost Ark or North by Northwest. It's a perfect mix of action, comedy, fresh characters, and a love story that feels very organic."
It is the second time Cruise and Diaz have been together on the silver screen, after Vanilla Sky in 2001, but this time it is less complex and more fun.
Diaz's character, June, chats with Miller on a flight and later finds herself in a cornfield without any other living passenger and crew. She is then pursued around the globe - dodging bullets in Boston, leaping rooftops in Austria and running from bulls in Spain - all in the company of Miller.
"It's a great date movie," Cruise says. "I want to make a movie so that when the audience leaves (the cinema) they just feel good about themselves, they feel they want to go to the place, to find themselves on an island that way. That was the intention of the film."
Cruise does not think films are divided into high- or low-grade ones - they are vehicles to entertain the audience. He says he is fortunate to have created a wide range of films, including straight drama, comedy, action and smaller independent films.
"As I said it is a privilege for me to make films," he says. "As a fan of cinema, I like seeing all kinds of films. As an artist, I like making them for the audience, that's what I like to do."
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