Tom Cruise Recalls ‘Puking My Guts Out’ While Flying A-4 in ‘Top Gun’

The actor couldn’t resist vomiting while flying in a fighter jet for the first time.

ByJaelani Turner-Williams
October 7, 2026

Flying a fighter jet for the first time was no simple feat for Tom Cruise.

The actor, who stars in new movie Digger, recalled filming the inaugural Top Gunin the mid-1980s on the Oct. 2 episode of The Jennifer Hudson Show.

“I remember everything, how incredible it was,” Cruise said around the 24-minute mark of the video below. “I remember the first time I flew, my whole dream [was] to also fly jets and fly airplanes. So now I fly jets. I fly airplanes. I fly parachutes. I race motorcycles and cars.”

Cruise added, “I do remember my first time in a fighter jet. I was flying an A-4 and I really puked my guts out.”

“I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve got to figure this out. I don’t want to keep puking the back of this airplane. We got to shoot a movie,’” the actor explained.

But trying to stay composed was no use to Cruise, who “puked again” during his first time flying an F-14, although he had two other flights that same day.

Ironically, the entertainer signed on to film Top Gunafter vomiting during a test flight with U.S. Navy Flight crew Blue Angels, which Cruise detailed in a 2016 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!

There’s almost no movie stunt that Cruise hasn’t done, and during a recent GQinterview, the actor denied fearing death.

“I understand life has certainties and uncertainties and in making movies and living life, what interests me is, like, let’s move the uncertainties more into the certainties, but I want to create other uncertainties so that, you know, we’re moving forward and it’s part of the adventure of it,” Cruise told the publication.