In the trailers for Tom Cruise’s new action film “Knight and Day,” the superstar and his leading lady, Cameron Diaz, perform a magnificent feat. While riding a speeding motorcycle, Cameron swings around to Tom’s frontside, while shooting at a host of people pursuing the pair.
A long time action star, the magnificent stunt was actually Tom’s idea.
“I called [Director James Mangold] and I said, ‘Look, I’ve got this stunt. It’s this motorcycle stunt… We’ve gotta put a motorcycle in this scene and I’ve gotta flip her around this thing,” Tom explained on Tuesday to Access Hollywood’s Tim Vincent during the film’s junket in Austria. “I called Cameron and said, ‘Are you up for it?’ She came out. We practiced it and stuff and Jim shot it. I couldn’t wait to do that!”
Tom added that he knew Cameron would be up to the task.
“She’s strong enough. The great thing about Cameron is she’s enormously talented, funny and athletic,” Tom told Tim. “There’s a lot of trust because she had full flash blanks in the gun as she’s going around [me], they’re coming past my head and she was always — you have to be there with someone and really know that they’re gonna be there.”
Beyond the movie stunt, the two performed another fantastic feat behind the scenes, which fans can see online . The footage shows Tom and Cameron flicking a soccer ball around with their feet and bodies like acrobats. Click HERE to see the footage.
“It was choreographed,” Cameron said, hinting that the footage, which showed her flicking a soccer ball from her foot to her back, wasn’t entirely real.
“So that was CGI?” Tim asked.
“Yeah!” Tom and Cameron laughed in unison.
“We had to act like there was a ball in between us — that we were playing around with and then we had to sell that and they put the ball in afterwards,” she giggled.
Tom revealed that before revealing it was CGI, he showed it to his internationally renowned soccer pal, David Beckham.
“I showed it to Beckham. All of his mates — they were all over there and I just kind of threw it on and I was like, ‘Yeah, I play a little football,’” Tom recounted for Tim. “I put it on, they’re like, ‘WHAT!’ They’re looking at it, ‘What! What! Come on!’ I went through it quickly. I was like, ‘What do you think?’”
“Knight and Day” hits theaters on June 23.
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