‘Mission: Impossible’ cast: See Tom Cruise and his costars from the franchise’s first action-packed film, then and now

Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt)

In what doubled as his producing debut, Tom Cruise headlined Mission: Impossible as superspy extraordinaire Ethan Hunt.

The role gave the daredevil actor a stunt that remains one of his most iconic moments: the vault heist, with Cruise famously dangling by a cable. As he detailed in 2021, shooting the scene — without touching the floor — was even harder than it looked. “We were running out of time and I went down to the floor and I kept hitting my face,” he said. The solution? Put coins in his shoes to help balance his body. “I put the pound coins in and I hung on the cable to see if I was level. And I had to make it. Brian (De Palma) was like, ‘One more and I’m going to cut into it,’ and I said, ‘I can do it.’”

The rest is spy movie history.

Cruise’s career hardly needs an introduction. His star-making moment — sans pants, with Bob Seger on the soundtrack — was Risky Business (1983), and not long afterward Top Gun (1986) put him on top. Dramatic turns in Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money (1986) and Rain Man (1988) paved the way for his first Oscar nomination in Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July (1989). 

His subsequent résumé speaks for itself: an impassioned lawyer in A Few Good Men (1992), a charming bloodsucker in Interview With the Vampire (1994), an idealistic sports agent in Jerry Maguire (1996), and a sleazy sex guru in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), with the latter two landing him additional Oscar nominations.

Cruise has continued running, jumping, motorcycling, and skydiving his way through the M:I franchise. In between, he collaborated with Steven Spielberg for Minority Report (2002) and War of the Worlds (2005), went dark in Collateral (2004), was unrecognizable in Tropic Thunder (2008), and died over and over again in Edge of Tomorrow (2014). Then he saved Hollywood with the record-setting Top Gun: Maverick (2022).

Cruise’s three high-profile marriages — to Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, and Katie Holmes — all ended in divorce. He has three children — two with Kidman and one from his marriage to Holmes.

Jon Voight (Jim Phelps)

Jon Voight had decades of stardom under his belt when he took on the only returning character from the original series, team leader Jim Phelps. There’s a twist, of course: This Phelps is the villain, double-crossing his team and selling out the IMF.

Voight rose to prominence as a male prostitute who befriends a hustler (Dustin Hoffman) in the Best Picture-winning Midnight Cowboy (1969), earning him a Best Actor nomination. That success set him up for ’70s classics like Catch-22 (1970) and Deliverance (1972) before winning Best Actor as a paraplegic Vietnam vet in Coming Home (1978), opposite Jane Fonda.

In the years afterward, the Academy nominated him for the prison escape thriller Runaway Train (1985) and Ali (2001), for playing legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell. He also had key parts in Heat (1995), Varsity Blues (1999), Holes (2003), and National Treasure (2004). His career got a second wind on the small screen when he played Mickey Donovan, the intimidating father of the titular Ray Donovan (2013–2020). He won a Golden Globe for the role.

Still active in the film business, he popped up in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) and recently had a crucial role in Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis (2024).

Voight wed actress Marcheline Bertrand in 1971, his second marriage. Before splitting in 1980, Voight and Bertrand welcomed two children: James Haven and Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie.

Emmanuelle Béart (Claire Phelps)

French actress Emmanuelle Béart made a rare foray into Hollywood to play Jim Phelps’ wife, Claire. She handles transportation in the first mission, fakes her death, and reunites with Ethan to (presumably) prove his innocence.

She auditioned at Cruise’s apartment, where she had to push him against a wall. Béart said the actor was impressed by her ability to be forceful and aggressive despite her slender frame. 

“I was told to pin this young man against the wall and put a gun to his head. And since I have good energy, let’s say, I said to myself, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’ And so I caught him, but I think he wasn’t expecting it,” she told a French talk show. “I was hired immediately.”

By this point, Béart was well-known in her native country. She won a César — the French equivalent of an Oscar — for Manon of the Spring (1986) and by now has eight César nominations to her name. She has worked with several of France’s most prominent filmmakers in Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse (1991), Claude Chabrol’s L’enfer (1994), Olivier Assayas’ Les Destinées (2000), and François Ozon’s 8 Women (2002).

Béart was married to actor-director Daniel Auteuil before her three-year marriage to Michaël Cohen. She has three children.

Henry Czerny (Eugene Kittridge)

Henry Czerny got the call to play subtly nefarious IMF director Eugene Kittridge after breaking out in a similarly sneaky character in Harrison Ford’s hit Clear and Present Danger (1994). He nearly passed up the role while sleep-deprived, but his agent insisted he take it.

The Toronto native was well-established in Canadian theater and television before Hollywood took notice. Following Mission: Impossible, he joined the star-studded ensemble of Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm (1997) and later appeared in The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), The Pink Panther (2006), and The A-Team (2010). In recent years, viewers may know him from Ready or Not (2019), Scream VI (2023), or ABC’s soapy thriller Revenge (2011–2015).

Czerny finally returned to the franchise in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (2023), with Kittridge playing a small but consequential role.

“In the first one, he is new,” Czerny said in 2023. “He’s the new head of the IMF and cocky. And he has his ego hurt when he discovers this kid’s the mole, even though it’s erroneous. And so that Kittridge has been chiseled away at, and a new one has emerged.”

Henry is married to Claudine Cassidy, with whom he shares a son, Cameron.

Vanessa Redgrave (Max)

Acting royalty Vanessa Redgrave played Max, an illegal arms dealer known for keeping herself anonymous and corrupting susceptible IMF agents. She partners with Ethan… but like so many characters in the film, it’s impossible to tell quite where her allegiances lie.

By that point in her career, Redgrave was already astoundingly accomplished. She won an Academy Award as the title character in Julia (1977) — her second of six Oscar nominations — and starred in Blow-Up (1966), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Devils (1977), and Howards End (1992).

Already an Emmy winner, she completed the Triple Crown of Acting in 2003, winning a Tony for her performance as struggling mother, wife, and addict Mary Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night. In more recent years, she has appeared as Saoirse Ronan’s older self in Atonement (2007) and as the du Pont matriarch in Foxcatcher (2014) — and shows no signs of stopping as she approaches 90.

The British actress is part of the famous Redgrave family alongside her mother Rachel, father Michael Redgrave, and sister Lynn. She shares two children, actresses Joely and Natasha Richardson, with her ex-husband, director Tony Richardson. She has been married to Italian actor Franco Nero since 2006. They share a son, born in 1969, from their earlier relationship.

Jean Reno (Franz Krieger)

Jean Reno played Franz Krieger, a disavowed IMF agent and helicopter pilot who was recruited by Ethan but was in cahoots with Phelps all along.

The French star is a three-time César nominee then known to American audiences as Léon in The Professional (1994), opposite Gary Oldman and Natalie Portman. He has rotated between Europe and Hollywood ever since, booking key supporting roles in Godzilla (1998), Ronin (1998), and The Da Vinci Code (2006). One of Reno’s most recognizable recent efforts was as a shady businessman in Spike Lee’s Vietnam-themed heist movie Da 5 Bloods (2020).

Reno has been married three times and has six children — two from each marriage. His current wife is British model Zofia Borucka, whom he wed in 2006.

Ving Rhames (Luther Stickell)

Known for his deep voice and muscular stature, Ving Rhames starred as the savvy hacker Luther Stickell. Producer Paula Wagner told EW in 1996 that her team wanted to cast Rhames against type. He’s made IMF a second home ever since, appearing in every installment and returning to particular prominence since Rogue Nation.

Rhames’s breakout role was gangster Marsellus Wallace in Quentin Tarantino’s classic Pulp Fiction (1994). He immediately became a coveted actor, from Con Air (1997) and Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight (1998) to Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead (1999) and the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004). He also won a Golden Globe for Don King: Made in America (1997), playing the legendary boxing promoter himself.

The actor’s commanding, emotionally resonant voice has also been put to use in the likes of Lilo & Stitch (2002), as social worker Cobra Bubbles, and as a peregrine falcon in The Wild Robot (2024).

Rhames married Deborah Reed in 2000. They have two children together.

Kristin Scott Thomas (Sarah Davies)

Kristin Scott Thomas had a brief appearance as Sarah Davies, an undercover IMF agent posing as the Washington visitor liaison.

The character is killed during the initial mission, but for Thomas, it was an ideal scenario. “I enjoy making brief apparitions in movies,” Thomas told Numéro. “You get all the fun of shooting, with none of the responsibility. If you’re clever — and I think I always have been — you can craft quite a complex character in just four or five scenes.”

Thomas’s big break came courtesy of Prince, who cast her in his directorial debut, Under the Cherry Moon (1986). She went on to become a BAFTA winner for Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), as the aristocrat Fiona, and an Oscar nominee as the emotionally torn Katharine Clifton opposite Ralph Fiennes in The English Patient (1996). She continued to book prestigious Hollywood roles — among them The Horse Whisperer (1998) and Gosford Park (2001) — while staying in high demand in both the U.K. and France.

Following her appearance as Winston Churchill’s wife in Darkest Hour (2017), she reunited with Gary Oldman — and returned to espionage — in Slow Horses (2022–present).

Thomas was previously married to French obstetrician François Olivennes, with whom she shares three children. She wed Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait in 2024.

Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė (Hannah Williams)

Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė was Hannah Williams, one of Ethan’s ill-fated original team. Hannah handles surveillance and spies on their target’s whereabouts, tracking him before getting into a supposed-to-be getaway car with Claire Phelps.

The Lithuanian actress was already successful in Eastern European cinema, including the Oscar-winning Russian drama Burnt by the Sun (1994), before Mission: Impossible introduced her to American audiences. She went on to play Brad Pitt’s wife in Seven Years in Tibet (1997) and Hannibal Lecter’s mother in Hannibal Rising (2007).

Off-screen, Dapkūnaitė formed a lengthy creative partnership with John Malkovich after the two starred together in 1992’s theatrical production of Slip of the Tongue. They went on to collaborate in multiple stage productions over the years.

The actress has been married three times, most recently to Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Yampolsky, with whom she has one son.

Emilio Estevez (Jack Harmon)

To help pull off the movie’s opening surprise, Cruise recruited Emilio Estevez to play hacker Jack Harmon, who meets a shocking end in an elevator shaft.

“The way Tom had explained it, he said, ‘Look, I’d love for you to come and join the cast. The whole opening number where everybody gets wiped out, it’s going to be a lot of well-known people and all of them are going to go uncredited and it’s really going to set up the level of peril for Ethan,” Estevez said in 2023. “And I said, ‘I’m in. You don’t have to ask me twice, I’m in.’”

Estevez rose to fame in The Outsiders (1983) and as a member of the so-called Brat Pack, starring in back-to-back hits The Breakfast Club (1985) and St. Elmo’s Fire (1985). He went on to jumpstart franchises with lead roles in Stakeout (1987), Young Guns (1988), and The Mighty Ducks (1992) before gradually turning his attention more to directing.

After helming his first feature at age 24, he has directed Men at Work (1990), Bobby (2006), and The Public (2018), among others. Meanwhile, he recently reprised his role as Coach Bombay in the series The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers (2021).

Estevez is the son of Martin Sheen and brother of Charlie Sheen. He shares two children with model Carey Salley and was later married to pop star Paula Abdul for two years.