Tom Cruise was paid nothing for the 2024 Paris Olympics stunt

Tom Cross‘s payday for performing a death-defying stunt at the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics may have been his lowest yet, as the superstar was paid nothing at all.

The Mission: Impossible The actor’s stunt saw him jump from the top of the Stade de France to the stadium where he was presented with the Olympic flag by the decorated gymnast Simone Biles and mayor of Los Angeles Karen Bass.

After collecting the flag, Cruise hopped on his motorcycle and a pre-recorded segment showed the actor riding through Paris, boarding a cargo plane to LA and arriving at the iconic Hollywood sign. Cruise’s breathtaking stunt was the perfect carryover to the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

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During a “CNBC x Boardroom: Game Plan” panel in Santa Monica on Tuesday, September 10, LA28 president and chairman Casey Wasserman shared Cruise’s very reasonable compensation for appearances in Paris. Wasserman confirmed that Cruise and his entire team weren’t paid a dime for the impressive performance and also explained how the stunt came together in the first place.

“The best part of the story is that we pitched on Zoom and the original idea was to have someone in the stadium act as a stunt double,” Wasserman said via The Hollywood Reporter.

Wasserman and the team assumed the actor would simply take part in a pre-taped segment in LA and be too busy to take part in the Olympics closing ceremony, but the Golden Globe winner had other plans.

“About five minutes after the presentation, [Tom Cruise] says: ‘I’m in. But I only do it if I can do everything,” Wasserman explained.

Behind the scenes, organizers tried to temper their expectations, believing Cruise would be too busy to actually participate, but he quickly proved them all wrong.

When it came to filming in Los Angeles, Cruise didn’t even let his hectic acting schedule get in the way. “He’s finished filming Mission: Impossible at 6 p.m. in London I immediately got on the plane,” Wasserman said. “He landed in LA at 4am and filmed the scene where he boarded a military plane.”

Wasserman continued, “In LA he makes two jumps out of the thing. He didn’t like the first one, so he did a second jump. He then flew from Palmdale to the Hollywood sign in a helicopter, filmed from 1 to 5 [a.m.]taken by helicopter to Burbank Airport and flown back to London.

In short, once Cruise sets his mind to something, there’s literally no stopping him.