Tom Cruise riding a motorcycle off a cliff was obviously his very first day on the set of ‘Mission: Impossible 7’

Hardly a star renowned for taking it easy, Tom Cruise always wants to raise the bar for daredevil antics higher and higher, with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One featuring what might be his most insane stunt yet.

The adrenaline junkie always wanted to ride a motorcycle off a cliff, and he did just that no less than half a dozen times to capture what’s destined to be remembered as the seventh installment in the long-running espionage’s marquee set piece. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any crazier, it turns out that Cruise did it on his first day of shooting.

In an interview with Empire, director Christopher McQuarrie dropped the bombshell that the leading man and producer wouldn’t be quietly easing himself back into the swing of things, but are we really surprised by anything Cruise does at this point in his career?

“Doing that on day one gave us all the time in the world to understand why he [Ethan] was doing what he was doing. If we sat around and tried to figure out these movies the old-fashioned way, you’d never find it, simply because it’s such a living, breathing thing.”

As for Cruise? Well, he’s never one for doing things the easy way, especially when all he wants to do is entertain.

“It’s never the easy road. I have a responsibility to audiences, the studio, my crew, my cast and industry. We can’t compromise just because all of these things happened. I can’t compromise the storytelling.”

At this rate, you can set your watch to Cruise’s death-defying shenanigans stealing all the headlines, which makes you wonder what on earth he’s possibly cooked up for Part Two.