Tom Cruise refused to kick co-star Pom Klementieff on Mission Impossible shoot, actress says 'I kept telling him...'

Hollywood star Tom Cruise, who has done a death-defying stunt by jumping a motocross bike off a cliff for his upcoming Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, refused to kick his female co-star Pom Klementieff while filming a fight scene for the film.

In Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, the seventh film in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Cruise's character Ethan Hunt is faced with a new adversary, Paris, portrayed by Pom Klementieff. The fight scene apparently involved a kick to the gut at one point. But while Klementieff, 37, practically begged Cruise, 60, to kick her for the sake of making their scene look realistic, her request was firmly denied.

Indicating her midsection, Klementieff told Entertainment Weekly: "I kept telling him to just kick me here. I was squeezing abs. (I said), 'You can just go for it'. He was like 'No, no, no, no, no'. I was like, But it`s going to help me!' But he wouldn`t do it."

Director Christopher McQuarrie described her character as "chaotic" and a "rebel". The filmmaker said: "(Paris is) very, very, very much a chaotic element in the story. It doesn`t matter how deep in the background she is, you're going to be watching her at all times and wondering what she's going to do."

Klementieff added: "(She) destroys everything in her path. She's a rebel, she's a killer, she's extremely skilled and quite lonely too. She's very different style-wise from every other actress in the Mission: Impossible franchise." Dead Reckoning is written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who previously helmed Rogue Nation in 2015 and Fallout in 2018. Part One, co-produced by Cruise, and scheduled for a July 14, 2023, release, will be followed by Dead Reckoning: Part Two in 2024, which is expected to be the final appearance of Cruise as Ethan Hunt.