Mission Impossible Fallout: Tom Cruise becomes first actor to perform HALO stunt

A death-defying skydive the actor trained a year for

The number of articles about Tom Cruise's dangerous antics on the Mission: Impossible Fallout set are seemingly growing by the day.

Early on in production, though, there was one set-piece the producers teased above all others, one Cruise had reportedly been training over a year for: the HALO jump, or high altitude, low opening jump.

What does that mean? Normal skydiving takes place at a typical altitude of around 4,000 metres, giving the jumper around 60 seconds of pure free-fall before deploying a parachute.

However, a HALO jump requires sees people launch out of aircraft from around 9,000 metres. From this height, the temperature drops to two degrees Celsius and requires those jumping to wear oxygen masks.

Not one to back down from a challenge, Cruise trained for weeks with a team of camera operators to perform a HALO jump for the new Mission: Impossible movie, the producers saying Cruise is the first ever actor to attempt the death-defying stunt. Watch the featurette above to see the 55-year-old actor take the initial jump from the aircraft.

Mission: Impossible Fallout, the sixth film in the action series, reaches UK cinemas 26 July.