In his eighth and possibly final outing as Ethan Hunt, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Tom Cruise takes action to new heights — quite literally. In one of the film’s most daring stunts, Cruise is seen hanging from and crawling along the wings of a 1940s-era biplane zooming above South Africa’s Drakensberg mountains.

“I remember seeing old footage of wing-walking,” says Cruise of a stunt he’s envisioned trying since he was a kid. “Those aircraft were only traveling at, I don’t know, 40, 50 miles an hour. This aircraft is up to over 120 miles an hour. Going out there, I was realizing that it takes your breath away.”

But how does the actor actually fuel up for stunts of this intensity? With breakfast, he says — and not just any breakfast.

“I actually eat a massive breakfast,” reveals Cruise. “The amount of energy it takes — I train so hard for that wing-walking. I’ll eat, like, sausage and almost a dozen eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and fluids. Oh, I’m eating! Picture: It’s cold up there. We’re at high altitude. My body is burning a lot.”

Even after decades of redefining action cinema, Cruise’s passion remains sky-high fueled by intensity, gratitude and apparently, a powerhouse breakfast!