Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to re-familiarize yourself with the cast of Mission: Impossible — Fallout, the upcoming sixth installment of the long-running blockbuster franchise.
The second franchise installment from writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, who helmed 2015’s Rogue Nation, Fallout reunites leading man Tom Cruise with series stars Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Michelle Monaghan, who are joined again by Rebecca Ferguson and Alec Baldwin, who boarded the series in Rogue Nation.
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Henry Cavill makes his Mission: Impossible debut in lieu of Jeremy Renner, who was unable to return because of his commitments to the Avengers franchise.
Tom Cruise
A-list movie star and producer Tom Cruise returns for his sixth time as leading man Ethan Hunt, a senior field operations agent for espionage and covert operations agency the Impossible Mission Force, or IMF.
Cruise, who is known for performing his own daredevil stunts on the action franchise, is one of the most recognizable actors of all time, his films having grossed more than $9 billion worldwide.
A young Tom Cruise featured in Francis Ford Coppola’s seminal coming-of-age drama The Outsiders in 1983 before landing his breakout role of Joel Goodson in iconic ’80s romcom Risky Business.
Cruise headlined another smash hit, Tony Scott’s Top Gun, in 1986, the same year he starred in Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money.
He’d star in three more iconic ’80s hits before the end of the decade — Cocktail, Rain Man, and Born on the Fourth of July, which earned him his first Academy Award nomination — before going on to dominate the ’90s, starring in Days of Thunder, A Few Good Men, Interview with the Vampire, and Cameron Crowe’s Jerry Maguire.
1996 was the same year Cruise first revived classic television show Mission: Impossible for the big screen with director Brian De Palma, cementing Cruise’s place as an action star.
In the modern age, Cruise has almost exclusively headlined big-budget action movies, including Minority Report, Collateral, War of the Worlds, Knight and Day, Jack Reacher and its sequel, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, sci-fis Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow, and, most recently, The Mummy.
Ving Rhames
Burly actor Ving Rhames plays disavowed IMF agent and computer specialist Luther Stickell, Ethan Hunt’s close friend and confidant. Rhames first appeared as the character in the original 1996 Mission: Impossible.
The actor is arguably best remembered for his role as Marsellus Wallace in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, a critically acclaimed crime film often deemed one of the best films ever made.
Rhames appeared as Nathan “Diamond Dog” Jones in Nic Cage-starring action hit Con Air in 1997 before portraying famous boxing manager and fight promoter Don King in Don King: Only in America, which won Rhames his first Golden Globe — an award he graciously and famously bestowed upon veteran actor Jack Lemmon at that year’s ceremony.
He also starred as police officer Kenneth in Zack Snyder’s 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, scripted by future Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, who recruited the actor to appear as Ravager captain Charlie-27 in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
Henry Cavill
British actor Henry Cavill was mostly a television actor, appearing in the BBC’s The Inspector Lynley Mysteries and Showtime’s The Tudors, before appearing in big screen Hollywood films like Stardust, Blood Creek, and Immortals.
Cavill landed his breakout role as Clark Kent-slash-Superman in Man of Steel, which birthed Warner Bros.’ shared DC Extended Universe.
He has since reprised the role in superhero blockbusters Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League, where Cavill was praised for his turn as a breezier Superman more in tune with the classic Christopher Reeve iteration of the character.
A charming and debonair Cavill starred as American spy Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and has since appeared in Netflix original drama Sand Castle.
Cavill joins the Mission: Impossible franchise as the mustached August Walker in Fallout.
Simon Pegg
Geek fan-favorite Simon Pegg is an English actor best known for his work in filmmaker Edgar Wright’s Three Flavors of Cornetto trilogy: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End.
A noted Star Trek fan, Pegg starred as Scotty in Paramount’s rebooted trilogy — Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond, which he co-wrote — and popped up, albeit heavily disguised, as Jakku junk boss Unkar Plutt in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Before appearing in Fallout, Pegg next heads to the big screen in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One as Ogden “Og” Morrow.
Pegg boarded the Mission: Impossible franchise as IMF technician turned field agent Benjamin “Benji” Dunn in 2006’s Mission: Impossible III, appearing in every installment since.
Rebecca Ferguson
Rising actress Rebecca Ferguson joined the franchise as Ilsa Faust in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, proving herself a worthy ally for Ethan Hunt and his IMF teammates.
Ferguson first turned heads for her Golden Globe-nominated portrayal of Elizabeth Woodville in The White Queen before landing the lead female role in 2015’s Rogue Nation.
In the years since, Ferguson has appeared in several big screen productions, including drama thriller The Girl on the Train, sci-fi horror Life, crime drama The Snowman, and the musical The Greatest Showman, where she starred alongside former X-Men star Hugh Jackman.
Alec Baldwin
Veteran actor Alec Baldwin first appeared as former CIA director and current IMF secretary Alan Hunley in Rogue Nation, where he exhibited an initial adversarial relationship with the clandestine espionage agency.
Baldwin has a varied list of credits to his name, with appearances in Beetlejuice, superhero film The Shadow, Michael Bay’s romance-slash-action epic Pearl Harbor, Martin Scorsese dramas The Aviator and The Departed, and romantic drama The Cooler, which landed Baldwin a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
More recently, Baldwin starred as Jack Donaghy in NBC sitcom 30 Rock and lent his voice to the eponymous diaper-wearing businessman in DreamWorks’ animated The Boss Baby. Baldwin won a Primetime Emmy for his parodic portrayal of President Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live.
Michelle Monaghan
Actress Michelle Monaghan reprises her role as Ethan Hunt’s wife, Julia Meade-Hunt, in Fallout, her third appearance in the series.
Monaghan made her debut in Mission: Impossible III, where she was kidnapped by villain Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as a bargaining chip against her super-spy husband. Julia sat out its followup, Ghost Protocol, as she was said to have been murdered.
This ended up proving a rouse when Julia showed up alive and well at the end of Ghost Protocol, the IMF having faked Julia’s death for her own protection. Hunt’s estranged wife wasn’t involved in 2015’s Rogue Nation, with Fallout marking Monaghan’s first return to the series since 2011.
Monaghan has a hefty action movie resume: she’s appeared in The Bourne Supremacy, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Eagle Eye, Source Code, and Sleepless, and also voiced iconic DC Comics heroine Wonder Woman in the animated Justice League: War.
Angela Bassett
Veteran actress and activist Angela Bassett makes her Mission: Impossible debut in Fallout in a yet-to-be-revealed role. Paramount recently unveiled the first look at Bassett’s professional-looking character, who is likely some kind of government higher-up.
Bassett won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Actress for her role as Tina Turner in biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It and is among the most recognizable and prominent black actresses.
She has portrayed civil rights advocate Betty Shabazz in Denzel Washington-starrer Malcolm X — a role she portrayed again in Panther, focused on the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense — civil rights activist Rosa Parks in The Rosa Parks Story, and Coretta Scott King, activist and wife of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., in Betty & Coretta.
Before catching her in Fallout this summer, audiences will see Bassett make her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Black Panther as Ramonda, regal mother of Wakandan king T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman).
Christopher McQuarrie
Christopher McQuarrie burst onto the scene with his 1995 Academy Award-winning screenplay for The Usual Suspects, directed by future X-Men helmer Bryan Singer.
Singer’s franchise-launching X-Men featured uncredited script work by McQuarrie, who would later return to that universe with more uncredited script work on 2013’s The Wolverine.
McQuarrie wrote and produced true story-inspired World War II Valkyrie, directed by Singer and starring Tom Cruise, in 2008.
The filmmaker directed Cruise for the first time in 2012’s Jack Reacher, and McQuarrie and Cruise’s collaborations would continue with Edge of Tomorrow in 2014, which McQuarrie co-wrote.
McQuarrie served as writer-director on Rogue Nation before producing Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, which saw Cruise reprise his role as the titular action hero.
McQuarrie and Cruise would collaborate yet again in last summer’s The Mummy, which was supposed to launch a cinematic universe inspired by the classic Universal Pictures monsters of old. The filmmaker also contributed uncredited script work to Star Wars standalone and massive blockbuster hit Rogue One.
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Mission: Impossible — Fallout is expected to debut its first footage during Sunday’s Super Bowl 52 before hitting theaters July 27th.
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