Tom Cruise suffered broken fingers and oxygen deprivation. The director revealed what happened on the set of "Mission: Impossible"

Christopher McQuarrie has opened up about a breakneck stunt Tom Cruise pulled off while filming the final installment of "Mission: Impossible." While filming a shot on the wing of a biplane, the actor's finger joints dislocated. The director revealed that his hands were "completely swollen" after filming the scene.

Tom Cruise is famous for performing even the most dangerous stunts in his films himself. In a previous interview, the 63-year-old actor revealed that while filming underwater scenes on the set of the final installment of the "Mission: Impossible" series, he spent a whopping 10 minutes in a water-filled tank , wearing a specially designed suit and mask. During this time, crew members monitored Cruise's health parameters, ensuring he didn't suffer from oxygen deprivation.

But this wasn't the only stunt the star risked his health—and even his life. While working on the set of "Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning," the three-time Golden Globe winner had to balance on the wing of a biplane . In a featurette accompanying the digital version of the film, which has just been released, Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie discussed the accomplishment of this daring feat.

In the aforementioned shot, the star climbs up the wing of the plane, and when the pilot performs a maneuver that involves turning the plane 180 degrees, Cruise grabs the seat belt at the last moment, dangling down.

"Oh yes, it was brutal," the actor emphasized. " The force was so great that your finger joints were dislocated. By the time we finished filming the scene, your hands were completely swollen. It hurt just to look at them," McQuarrie added.

The director of the production talked about the absolutely terrifying behind-the-scenes of the creation of this scene in May during a meeting with journalists at the Cannes Film Festival, where the official premiere of the last part of "Mission: Impossible" took place.

"There was no radio, so I had to fly the helicopter to steer it and give hand signals as it walked on the wing. When you leave the cockpit, the wind is blowing off the propeller at over 140 miles per hour. You're breathing, but you're not actually getting any oxygen. Tom was supposed to be there for 12 minutes. (...) At times, he was so physically exhausted that he couldn't get up from the wing, and we didn't know if he was conscious or not ," the filmmaker explained.

McQuarrie revealed that at a critical moment, Cruise risked his life.

"When we reached the 12th minute, we had only three minutes of fuel left. Tom literally had three minutes to get up and get into the cockpit because the plane couldn't land with him on the wing. So he stuck his head into the cockpit to get some oxygen and have the energy to get off the wing. He made it, he came out unscathed. No one else would have done that," the director emphasized.

In early June, it was revealed that Cruise had landed a Guinness World Record for another, equally risky shot. The actor, who played the fearless agent Ethan Hunt, was recognized for his work on one of the film's final sequences, which was filmed in the sky. At one point, his character jumps from a plane, deploys his parachute, which bursts into flames, and saves his life at the last moment with the help of his reserve parachute.

To film the shot, the then 62-year-old actor repeated his stunt 16 times, breaking the Guinness record for the most parachute jumps performed in flames.