Mission: Impossible Star Reveals Tom Cruise Regretted Killing Off Their Character

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make an uncredited cameo in Mission: Impossible — and be killed off in the film’s opening minutes. It’s a mission that actor Emilio Estevez accepted, reuniting with The Outsiders and Young Guns co-star Tom Cruise in director Brian De Palma’s adaptation of the TV spy series that would launch a seven-film franchise (with an eighth on the way). Estevez played Jack Harmon,a fellow IMF agent and ally of Ethan Hunt (Cruise) who falls victim to rogue Impossible Mission Force director Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) in the opening sequence. 

“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 told Uproxx about his cameo. “And I said, ‘I’m in. You don’t have to ask me twice, I’m in.’ And then afterwards, obviously, the movie’s a giant hit.”

More than 20 years later, Cruise is “still making them,” Estevez continued. “Tom was like, we were doing a run the year after that and he says, ‘Man, we made such a mistake killing you off.’”

According to Estevez, Cruise and Mission: Impossible 2 director John Woo tried “to figure out a way” to bring him back for the sequel, “but it just didn’t make sense. I thought you could have because with all the [latex disguise] masks, right?”

While Estevez isn’t expected to return in the upcoming Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, the two-part franchise finale will bring back two characters from the 1996 film: ex-IMF Director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and former CIA analyst William Donloe (Rolf Saxon).

Joining returning regulars Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Rebecca Ferguson in M:I 7 are series newcomers Hayley Atwell (Captain America: The First Avenger), Pom Klementieff (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3), Shea Whigham (Fast & Furious), Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride), and Rob Delaney (Deadpool 3).

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One opens only in theaters July 12th, followed by Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part Two on June 28th, 2024.