Charlie Vickers on Tom Cruise and the freediving debate
Said Tom Cruise would beat him in a freediving contest, while questioning whether oxygen was used before some film stunts. In an interview with The Guardian…
Charlie Vickers cast doubt on how film freediving feats compare with an ordinary breath-hold, then landed on a deliberately provocative punchline about Tom Cruise. The Australian actor said Cruise would win a direct contest, but suggested oxygen may have been used before some underwater scenes.
Vickers made the remarks in a Guardian interview published on October 18, where he also spoke about playing Sauron in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, working with Sam Neill and proposing to his wife in muddy woods. His comment about Cruise was a joke in a quick-fire interview, not an independently established allegation.
“Yeah, exactly. That’s the headline. Tom Cruise cheated at freediving,” Vickers said.
The line followed a more qualified explanation. Vickers said he believed Cruise had held his breath for “six or seven minutes or something like that,” while he could reach four minutes. He added that Cruise would win “in a straight-up fight.”
Vickers questioned whether the comparisons were alike
Vickers then drew a distinction between the conditions he believed were used in some film sequences and the way he had trained. He said actors in productions including Mission: Impossible and Avatar may have breathed oxygen through a mask before freediving, which he described as a way to saturate the blood.
“Whereas we didn’t do that. We just breathed normal air, which I think means you can’t hold your breath for as long,” he told the Guardian.
His explanation was tentative. Vickers said he was “sort of butchering the explanation,” and the interview supplied no further details about the specific scenes or methods he referenced. The remarks therefore offer his view of the comparison, rather than evidence that Cruise broke a rule or misrepresented a performance.
That distinction matters because the punchline is sharper than the claim behind it. Vickers first acknowledged that Cruise would win a direct contest, then joked about oxygen use; the interview does not establish that using oxygen was prohibited or that the actor violated competition rules.
From Sauron to an awkward proposal
The freediving exchange was one part of a broader set of personal questions. Vickers described his version of “wholly evil” as “A complete disregard for the feelings and wellbeing of other people,” tying the answer to his portrayal of Sauron.
He also recalled meeting Sam Neill during the making of Palm Beach. Vickers said Neill was “unbelievably kind to everyone” and remembered him recreating a dinosaur sequence from Jurassic Park with a castmate who wanted photographs to send to friends.
His account of proposing to his wife was less polished. The couple were in woods in Hampshire near where she grew up, a place associated with childhood letters from fairies. The ground was muddy, and Vickers said he avoided kneeling in it, opting instead for what he called “quite a deep lunge” to simulate the gesture.
Vickers also recalled waving to Mo Farah across a room after mistakenly thinking the athlete had noticed him. Farah did not respond, and a friend witnessed the awkward moment.
On the freediving question, Vickers’s own assessment stayed clear: he said he could reach four minutes, while estimating Cruise’s time at “six or seven minutes or something like that.”
Source: theguardian.com
