Tom Cruise kept smashing his face on the floor until he weighted his shoes with coins

Tom Cruise kept smashing his face on the floor. Suspended on cables above a pressure-sensitive surface for the CIA vault heist in 1996’s Mission: Impossible, he lost his balance again and again and put the shoot behind schedule.

Running out of time, he went to the stunt crew and said, “Give me coins.” He loaded pound coins into his shoes, then hung on the cables first to check whether he was level. Director Brian De Palma warned that one more attempt was all they had before he would have to cut into the shot another way. Cruise answered that he could do it.

He dropped down, started at the computer, and stayed clear. “Oh my gosh, I didn’t touch,” he later said. He held the pose—holding it, holding it, holding it—sweating hard while the camera kept rolling. He realized De Palma was working the moment and refused to stop. Off camera the director began to howl and finally called, “All right, cut.”

Coins in the shoes made the inches-clear hover possible. The CrispyTheory clip of Cruise telling the story has 163,935 likes.