Most action stars hand the truly dangerous shots to a stunt double. For Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, Tom Cruise jumped out of a helicopter under a parachute soaked in fuel and set on fire, and then did it 15 more times.

Three Seconds of Fire

According to Guinness World Records, Cruise leapt from a helicopter 16 times while strapped to a parachute that had been pre-soaked in fuel and lit ablaze.

The helicopter took him to a minimum of 7,500 feet before each drop.

The burning canopy could only last about 2.5 to 3 seconds before it disintegrated. In that window, Cruise had to cut away the charred fabric and deploy a backup chute to land safely.

"If this is twisted while it's burning, I'm going to be spinning and burnt," Cruise said in a behind-the-scenes video Paramount released to mark the record.

Hundreds of Jumps Before the First Flame

Cruise did not walk onto this stunt cold. He has been a licensed skydiver for many years and a licensed pilot for more than 30 years.

Guinness says he completed hundreds of jumps in preparation, and the team spent weeks planning the sequence.

On some of the burning jumps, Cruise also had a 50-pound camera rig attached to his body to capture a close-up view of the fall.

That all-real approach runs through the series. "The audience can tell when something's been cheated, so it's important to be doing it all for-real," Wade Eastwood, the stunt coordinator on 2018's Mission: Impossible - Fallout, told Guinness World Records.

A Helicopter, Not a Plane

On screen, the burning parachute is part of the film's climactic plane sequence.

The real jumps were made from a helicopter. Filming for the sequence took place in the Drakensberg mountains of South Africa.

A Record Written for Him

Guinness World Records awarded Cruise the title of most burning parachute jumps by an individual on June 4, 2025.

No previous record existed. The category began with his 16 jumps.

"Tom doesn't just play action heroes - he is an action hero," said Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of Guinness World Records.

Cruise, born on July 3, 1962, was 62 when the title was awarded. The fire on screen lasts only a few seconds. It took 16 burning parachutes to get it.

Hero photo: Tom Cruise at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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