Tom Cruise recalls terrifying stunts that led him to ‘the hospital’

Tom Cruise started his death-defying stunts when he was just two-and-a-half years old.

The Hollywood actor has become known for his jaw-dropping movie antics which have included scaling Dubai's Burj Khalifa skyscraper for Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, dangling from an Airbus 400 during take-off for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and driving a motorcycle off a cliff for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One.

However, Tom has now revealed his love of stunt started when he was just a toddler as he climbed out onto the roof of his family home to "look at the stars."

During an appearance on the New Heights podcast, Tom explained, "I was doing them since I was a little kid. It started out, I was a little kid and I opened the window and I climbed out onto the roof.”

He continued, "I’m, like, two-and-a-half or three years old. But I liked to look at the stars. The neighbour called and was like: ‘I think there’s a child on your [roof] …'

"And my mum was like: 'Oh my goodness,’” Tom recalled.

He went on to add that as a child he liked to climb tall trees on windy days because he I liked the feel of it" but his exploits left him with a of broken bones.

Tom told the hosts Jason and Travis Kelce, "I did so many things and I didn’t do it well. I’d break bones. I’d end up in the hospital."

The actor revealed that his mother tried to lure her son back indoors and keep him out of trouble by baking him cakes and said, "My mum never said: 'Don’t do it'. She’d bake a cake and be like: 'It’s really windy, why don’t you come down here? I’ve got some cake for you.'”

Tom also revealed he used to drive cars when he was too small to see over the steering wheel. He said: “I used to sit on a phone book and race the car out on the streets. I was so small, I had to get the phone book. I didn’t have my licence."

As an adult, he learned to wing-walk on the side of a plane for a stunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and he confessed he had been thinking about that particular stunt since he was a child.

"The first time I got on an aeroplane, I was about five or six and I’m sitting next to the window. As we’re taking off, I looked at the wing and I thought: 'How cool would it be to be out there?' I don’t know why,” Tom Cruise said as the Mission Impossible franchsie brought his childhood thought to life.