For actress Jennifer Connelly, accepting the role of Penny Benjamin in Top Gun: Maverick (2022) was a relief—her character was the love interest, a single mother who ran a bar, and was largely “all about the water,” not the air. This was ideal, as Connelly had long suffered from a “crippling fear of flying.”
However, what she hadn’t accounted for was the legendary enthusiasm—and deception—of her co-star, Tom Cruise. In a moment that has since become famous backstage lore, Cruise effectively “tricked” Connelly into a death-defying aerial stunt in his personal plane, a move that inadvertently cured her of her phobia.
Jennifer Connelly revealed that when she initially signed on for the film, her character was explicitly kept out of the sky. But during a scene involving her character and Maverick (Tom Cruise) on the tarmac, the setting was a tiny, vintage North American P-51 Mustang, a plane that Cruise personally owns and pilots.
As they were shooting the scene, seated close together in the cramped cockpit, Cruise initiated the subtle ‘lure,’ as Connelly recounted on The Graham Norton Show. He started with casual questions: “Jen, have you ever been in a plane like this before?” and then, “Ever done any aerobatic flying before?”
Connelly, afraid to confess her long-held fear, grew suspicious but played it cool. Cruise continued, promising her nothing strenuous: “It’s going to be very graceful. Very elegant. Very elegant rolls. It’s going to be nice and easy.” And with that, the star—a fully licensed pilot—started the engine.
Connelly suddenly found herself in the air with Cruise at the controls, performing aerobatics in the P-51 Mustang. The plane used in the film’s climax is indeed Tom Cruise’s real, privately-owned aircraft. Unlike the F/A-18 fighter jets, which the actors could not pilot themselves, Cruise flew the P-51 Mustang for the scene with Connelly.
The extreme adrenaline and the absolute focus required during the flight, which was performed with complete assurance and precision by Cruise, forced Connelly to move past her panic. She emerged from the cockpit not just safe, but exhilarated, having literally forgotten she was terrified of dying in the moment. She credits Cruise with helping her overcome her phobia.
The “cockpit moment” became a history-making personal event for Jennifer Connelly, who was taken from extreme fear to joyous excitement by the very person who had convinced her to face the skies. The film itself was a phenomenal hit, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2022 globally, pulling in over $1.496 billion worldwide, a testament to the audience’s appetite for its grounded, real-life aerial stunts.