'Mission' tests new recruit Rebecca Ferguson
Rebecca Ferguson's first day of work on Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation was pretty standard — you know, rappelling 100 feet from the roof of the Vienna Opera House with her legs wrapped around Tom Cruise.
"And it really just escalated from there," says the 31-year-old Swedish actress, who joins the fifth installment of the adrenaline-fueled Mission franchise as lethal agent Ilsa Faust. "They didn't tell me a lot about what I'd be doing. But knowing it was a Mission movie, I pretty much knew what would be expected."
This kind of action should have been a problem for someone with a perfectly normal fear of heights and extreme-speed car chases. In Rogue Nation (opening July 31), Ferguson took on underwater stunts and a solo 120-foot free fall — a shot she had to do 10 times.
"That's immensely scary, especially if you're scared of heights," says Ferguson. "But Tom Cruise is like walking cognitive therapy. I had vertigo, I had claustrophobia. I don't really anymore. You put yourself in these situations where you just do it. I realized I had this bit of me where I could push myself over the edge."
Sometimes literally.
Ferguson appeared as strong single mother Ergenia in 2014's Hercules, but required Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to do her killing. She holds her own in Rogue Nation, even calling her martial arts-proficient character "a female Ethan Hunt," after Cruise's lead spy character in the $2 billion-grossing franchise.
Producer Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie were hooked after watching how she carried herself in a non-action audition tape. Ferguson's charisma burst through.
"She leapt off the screen," says Cruise. "We got lucky. She's amazing."
Before filming began, Ferguson trained for four weeks, six days a week, learning everything from martial arts to firearms. She took quickly to guns, especially a custom-built rifle she had to assemble herself.
"They had to rip it out of my hand at the end — I just loved it," says Ferguson. "There's a crazy empowerment to holding a gun like that, which I question morally, since I always called myself a pacifist."
She also gradually worked her way up in height for rappelling, from 10 feet to 20 and onward, until she was ready for the big-time opera house.
She's now as dangerous as she looks in a killer ballgown during a scene in which Faust's martial art skills are on full display. Ferguson had stunt help with the most lethal kicks, "but I did quite a lot myself," she says.
Her fluid dress and four-inch stilettos were designed to allow maximum mobility as she ran along with Cruise.
"But running on those was nearly worse than jumping off the Vienna Opera House roof," Ferguson says.
She was so into the Mission zone that it was only after filming ended that she was able to contemplate what had taken place.
"I'm actually just realizing where I have been and what I have been through in the last months," says Ferguson, laughing. "I'm going through some post-shock."