Jeremy Renner has never shied away from talking about things that scare him. After surviving the devastating snowcat accident in 2023, the actor has spoken candidly about its physical and emotional toll on him, making it clear that nothing in Hollywood truly compares to what happened that day. And yet, one movie stunt still stands out as the most terrifying experience he ever had on a film set.
It is the jaw-dropping stunt from ‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol‘ that required both preparation and courage. Although Tom Cruise received most attention for scaling the exterior of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, Renner found himself in a position that left him genuinely panicked. What made the sequence even more dreadful had nothing to do with the height. Instead, it was the person responsible for keeping him safe.
Jeremy Renner Had To Rely On Someone Else While Filming The Stunt
The Burj Khalifa sequence remains one of the defining moments of the ‘Mission: Impossible’ franchise. Cruise famously climbed the exterior of the world’s tallest building while being secured by hidden safety wires.
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Meanwhile, Renner, who played IMF analyst William Brandt, had a different responsibility during the sequence. Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Renner recalled filming the scene in which Brandt leans out of the broken window to grab Ethan Hunt by the ankle.
Cruise hung outside the building on safety wires, but Renner said he wore only his regular costume as he leaned out of the opening. “There’s this one scene at the Burj Khalifa…and we’re at the top of it, of course,” the actor said.
“He’s hanging out of the building on a couple wires, and I’m supposed to be holding him by the ankle, and I’m in nothing but slacks.” The height alone made the stunt intimidating, but Renner quickly realized something else was demanding his attention.
As he prepared to lean out of the window, he glanced behind him to check on the crew member responsible for holding him in place. Instead of watching the stunt, the man appeared completely distracted, increasing the actor’s anxiety.
One Unexpected Moment Made The Stunt Even More Frightening
Looking back, Renner admitted that seeing the crew member casually using his phone instantly shattered what little confidence he had. “I look back and the guy holding me, he’s like, on his phone, not even paying attention,” he recalled. “I’m like, ‘Dude!'”
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The moment became so unnerving that Renner jokingly warned Cruise about what might happen if things went wrong. Speaking to Extra, he recalled the exact moment, “Tom was laughing at me because I told him I was going to vomit on him.”
Cruise, meanwhile, appeared completely comfortable throughout the sequence, something that only highlighted how differently the two actors approached high-risk stunts. Despite Renner’s fears, the scene came together without incident and became one of the film’s standout moments.
Cruise received much of the praise for climbing the Burj Khalifa, but Renner’s performance required him to lean out hundreds of meters above the ground while placing complete trust in the people behind him. That experience remains his most frightening memory from a movie set.
However, his perspective changed dramatically after the 2023 snowcat accident, where his own 14,330-pound PistenBully snowcat ran him over right near his Nevada property. The near-fatal incident left him with dozens of broken bones and a long recovery.
Since then, he has repeatedly said that surviving it reshaped the way he thinks about fear, risk, and life itself. Still, looking back at his career, dangling from a massive skyscraper over ten years ago was the only Hollywood stunt that came close to matching that real-world nightmare.
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