Yeah he’s a movie star, a Hollywood superstar in fact, but Tom Cruise says he wanted to ride motorcycles since the age of 12.
With horrifically bankable films behind him and more to come (like Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol) Cruise is also famous for doing his own stunts from motorcycle chases, to hanging off the 124th floor of the world’s tallest building.
“From as early as I can remember, I wanted to ride motorcycles and race cars. I wanted to do jumps and stunts. Every birthday I wanted only a motorcycle. By the time I was 12, I`d bought my own,” Cruise said. “I crashed a lot, because I like to go fast. I`d create ramps to try to jump over garbage cans on my bike, figuring it out on my own.”
Now 49-years-old, Cruise wasn’t always successful and suffered a fair share of injuries in his quest to keep his adrenaline levels topped off. Among those injuries – he’s broken his nose three times – and that’s not the entire list.
“I’ve broken my leg,” he said. “Another time, I got hit with a baseball bat by accident. Then I re-injured it on a motorcycle. No one thought about helmets or pads back then. When I was 18, on the set of Taps, I met the stunt guys. I was like, `You train for stuff like this?` Back in the day there were no videos of this stuff.”
