If you ever find yourself struck down with a mysterious illness while stranded on an island, your first port of call would most probably be a doctor. For Rebecca Ferguson, it was Tom Cruise.
The Dune actor, who stars in new thriller Mercy, befriended Cruise while acting alongside him in the Mission: Impossible franchise, and called upon him for assistance when she found herself in a tight scrape in the Maldives.
“I called him once when I was in the Maldives when I had a really bad stomach,” she told The Independent in a new interview. “I was like, ‘Can I get a helicopter?’ It was quite a funny thing.”
Ferguson said she became sick with a stomach bug, which she “thought was a big worm”, and wondered who could help fly her out of the island. “My husband [Rory St Clair Gainer] was like, ‘Tom can get a helicopter.’”
“I actually had gastroenteritis,” she continued, adding: “I’m giving you too much information.”
Swedish star Ferguson, 42, first appeared as MI6 agent Ilsa Faust in the 2015 Mission: Impossible film Rogue Nation (2015), and reprised the role in Fallout (2018) and Dead Reckoning (2023).
Her other credits include both Dune and Dune: Part Two (2021 and 24), as well as Life (2017), Doctor Sleep (2019) and Netflix’s political thriller A House of Dynamite (2025).
Since 2023, Ferguson has starred in the Apple TV+ series Silo, about a subterranean city with 144 floors whose residents unquestioningly lock themselves away from the outside world under the belief they will die if they leave.
She isn’t the only Mission: Impossible cast member to have struck up a camaraderie with Cruise: in 2023, Ted Lasso actor Hannah Waddingham, who appeared in the 2025 film The Final Reckoning, defended the star from criticism during an appearance on ITV series James Martin’s Saturday Morning.
After recalling how she spent “five intense days” with Cruise on the USS George HW Bush fighter carrier, Waddingham told TV chef Martin: “I have to say, I have a real problem with anybody that goes at him now.”
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She continued: “He is without doubt one of the loveliest and encouraging, positive and inspiring human beings I have ever met. Isn’t he gorgeous? I have no time for anyone saying anything about him.”
While Cruise remains one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, he is also known for his outlandish off-screen behaviour and is often the subject of intense media speculation.
In 2005, he made headlines after jumping on a sofa during an appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s chat show to declare his love for then-girlfriend Katie Holmes and, that same year, quarrelled with Matt Lauer about the practice of psychiatry, which Cruise called a “pseudo-science”.
Most of Cruise’s controversy, though, surrounds his association with the Church of Scientology. In 2008, a leaked promotional video showed the actor discussing the benefits of the controversial religion, which bewildered his fans.
Ferguson’s new film Mercy, co-starring Chris Pratt, is released on 23 January. The full interview with Ferguson and Pratt is being released tomorrow.
