Tom Cruise has revealed the gut-busting ritual he relies on to fuel his daredevil movie stunts. 

The Mission Impossible star famously insists on performing his own stunts in his various action films, from hanging off a military plane and riding a motorcycle off a cliff  to climbing the 828-metre Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai.

Cruise has now revealed that he has to be fuelled with energy before he does his stunts and will eat “almost a dozen” eggs with bacon and sausages, and down several cups of coffee before the cameras start rolling.

“I actually eat a massive breakfast,” he told People Magazine for its Mission: Impossible issue.

“The amount of energy it takes – I train so hard for that wing-walking,” Cruise said. 

“I’ll eat, like, sausage and almost a dozen eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and fluids,” he added. 

“Oh, I’m eating! Picture: It’s cold up there. We’re at high altitude. My body is burning a lot.”

In the eighth instalment of the critically acclaimed series, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which is released later this month, the Top Gun icon experienced what it was like to spin inside a washing machine as the crew built a tank to shoot a submarine interior that tilted and spun 360 degrees.

Wearing a scuba mask, Cruise breathed in his own carbon dioxide but he said he had trained for carbon dioxide build-up for when he earned his pilots licence in 1994.

“You’re not going to feel as connected with the character if I went with a regular mask and a thing in my mouth to breathe,” the Oscar-nominated actor said.

“Luckily when you’re flying jets you train for hypoxia and for carbon dioxide build-up. You start to be able to perceive your body and how it’s reacting so that I knew when to stop.”

Cruise, who was inspired to do stunts after seeing footage of wing-walkers as a child, has said he “loves” making the movies, even if it does mean dicing with death.

“I love making movies. It’s not what I do. It’s who I am,” he said.

-with AAP