Tom Cruise and His New "Risky Business"

Tom Cruise actually motorcycles off Norwegian cliff for 'Mission: Impossible' stunt. What he pulls off to survive it is even better.

I just got new respect for actor Tom Cruise as he goes well beyond acting. Spend some time, at the end is a video well worth watching.

The “Old Risky Business”

Actor Tom Cruise has developed a reputation not only for performing his own stunts but also for making them incredibly elaborate and downright terrifying.

For "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One," which hits theaters next July, Cruise and his team worked up a stunt for the ages. His plan was to gun a motorcycle down an elevated ramp on the edge of a Norwegian cliff, head directly into skydive mode once he's airborne, and then parachute back to the ground.

The whole thing is over and done in a flash, but Cruise said in a behind-the-scenes video released Monday that it took "years" to develop and perfect.

"This is far and away the most dangerous thing we've ever attempted," Cruise says in a voiceover as the clip begins.

Cruise practiced motocross jumps and skydiving to prepare for the stunt — but not just a few times. Experts working on the stunt with Cruise said he performed over 500 skydives and 13,000 motocross jumps to get him operating like clockwork.

But the training was just one necessity. Cruise's team practiced the stunt in England using harnesses — as well as a ton of technology to track and calculate trajectory and many other factors.

Then Cruise & co. headed to Norway and helicoptered everything to the cliff for the real thing, constructing the ramp over several months.

Miles Daisher, the movie's BASE jumping coach, tried to calm everyone's nerves: "You know, the only things you really have to avoid while doing a stunt like this is serious injury or death."

Fortunately, Daisher added that "you're riding a motorcycle — which is pretty dangerous — on top of a ramp that's elevated ... so if you come off the ramp, that's gonna be very bad. You're falling — if you don't get a clean exit from the bike, and you get tangle up with it; if you don't open your parachute, you're not gonna make it."

Then a nifty drone filmed Cruise going for it, without a harness, without a soft-landing spot.

By now you might be asking yourself how this all played out. If so, check out the behind-the-scenes video:

New “Risky Business.”