Tom Cruise already has a reputation as a real life action man but his latest revelation hammers home how well-earned that is.

The Hollywood star, 53, learned to hold his breath underwater for six minutes in order to film scenes for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation.

Cruise famously loves to do his own stunts but in a behind-the-scenes video shown exclusively by Access Hollywood on Tuesday, he admits that even his stunt team were worried he wouldn't be able to pull that one off.

'Normally in underwater sequences, people hold their breath for 10 seconds, 15 seconds max,' Cruise explained in the video.

'So I had to prove to everyone that it was actually safe and spend time with the safety guys and the safety officers to show them not only is it safe, it's better that I know how to hold my breath because I'm going to be very relaxed. No-one's going to have to rush in. No-one has to panic.'

And it wasn't only Cruise who went through the 'breath hold' program designed for the military; his co-star Rebecca Ferguson, who played Ilsa Faust, did so as well.

The behind-the-scenes footage showed Cruise in a wetsuit standing in a studio water tank with his face down in the water.

One of his trainers is beside him and counting off the seconds on a stopwatch to six minutes.

Cruise comes back up gasping for air as another safety officer instructs him to 'breathe, breathe, breathe.'

In the movie, the actor's character is underwater trying to retrieve a computer chip while avoiding a rotating metal arm.

It's a scene that last for about six minutes.

'We didn’t want cuts. We were looking for a claustrophobic effect. Tom really wanted to make the sequence difficult and we wanted to take the audience on that journey with us,' Wade Eastwood, the stunt coordinator on Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, told Variety in an interview published last month.

Eastwood said that working with an actor like Cruise who wants to do his own stunts is a huge challenge but it also reaps big rewards.

'If I’ve got a stunt guy working, we cut in and out and the stunt guy does what’s required of him as a stuntman,' he told Variety.

'With Tom, he’ll do what’s required of him as a stuntman but he also has to act the character. That’s the biggest difference.'

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation has grossed $673.5million to date worldwide, and comes out on Digital HD on November 17 and on Blu-Ray on December 15.

Made for each other: Cruise's co-star Rebecca Ferguson also learned to hold her breath and also did her own stunts in the fast-paced action thriller