Mar 30, 2025 02:16 PM IST
‘Try doing the opposite,’ Tom Cruise told co-star Hayley Atwell which helped her deal with social anxiety.
Actor Hayley Atwell received a lot of praise for her action sequences along with Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. She played Grace in the 2023 release. In her recent appearance the Reign With Josh Smith Podcast, Hayley opened up about her experience of shooting the film, and how co-star Tom Cruise’s advice helped her deal with social anxiety. (Also read: Mission Impossible actor Hayley Atwell: ‘Tom invited me to watch playbacks’)
What Hayley said
During the interaction, Hayley said, “If you walk into a room and you feel the anxieties coming, and it makes me want to retreat into myself, and I start to overthink and I start to go, ‘Do I look weird? Do I seem awkward? I’m not speaking, I’m just muffling my words or I need something to do to numb me from this,’ we go into ourselves. And he said, ‘Try doing the opposite.’ ”
Where does it live outside of me
She went on detail, “Try to look out, look around the room and go ‘Where is it? Where is the thing that I have attached on to my insecurity.’ ‘Is it that person over there that reminds me of my school bully? Is it that person over there that didn’t give me a job once? That person over there that I think was mean to me once? Where does it live outside of me and where do I feel like the source of it might be coming from?’”
Hayley rose to attention in Hollywood through projects such as The Duchess (2008), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Cinderella (2015), and The Pride (2013).
Meanwhile, Tom will return as Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning. The film, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, is scheduled to be released on May 23, 2025.
