The actor, who flew for three decades, tells "" that he could see Cruise’s passion for flight and helped him get airborne.

Kurt Russell reveals he helped Tom Cruise learn how to fly after Top Gun: ‘He’s a good stick man’

The actor, who flew for three decades, tells "" that he could see Cruise's passion for flight and helped him get airborne.

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and *NME*.

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February 2, 2026 8:30 a.m. ET

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Tom Cruise; Kurt Russell. Credit:

Jamie McCarthy/WireImage; Steve Granitz/FilmMagic

Kurt Russell is revealing how he helped Tom Cruise earn his wings. **

The legendary actor and former pilot tells ** that he saw that Cruise felt the need… the need for speed after starring in the 1986 classic *Top Gun* and personally aided him on his quest to get airborne. **

“I flew for 30 years. I'm not current anymore, but I flew a lot of different airplanes,” Russell explains. “Matter of fact, I helped Tom after he did *Top Gun*. He and I got together. He wanted to go flying. We flew in my plane, and then I saw that he really wanted to learn to fly and did what I could to help him out in that regard.”

Tom Cruise on the set of 'Top Gun'.

Paramount Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty

Cruise would go on to become a pilot thanks to help from Russell and director Sydney Pollack, the latter of whom gifted the *Mission: Impossible *actor flying lessons after he starred in his 1993 film *The Firm*. The actor has since put his aeronautical abilities to good use in films like 2017’s *American Made *as well as *Top Gun*’s celebrated 2022 sequel, *Top Gun: Maverick*.**

“He's a good stick man,” Russell says of Cruise. “And it was nice to see in the reprise of that character so many years later. I loved what they did with *Top Gun*. I just thought it was great.”

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Directed by Joseph Kosinski, *Top Gun: Maverick *follows Cruise’s character Pete “Maverick” Mitchell as he instructs a group of young Navy pilots on how to both conduct and survive a death-defying mission.

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While Russell may be grounded for now, his new Michelob ULTRA ad set to air during the Super Bowl is certainly full of big *Top Gun *energy. The commercial, which sees Russell help a rookie skier become a certified slope superstar, is not only directed by Kosinski, but also stars *Maverick* actor Lewis Pullman. So, did either of them ask Russell about potentially getting back into the cockpit for *Top Gun 3*? **** “No, we just talked about this,” Russell says, laughing along the way. “And I thought [Kosinski] did a great job on *F1 [The Movie]. *It was nice…. He did a great job with it. It was just fun working with a really top-notch guy for the day. And we had a ball — we did things different ways and then they put it together, and I like what they put together. I thought it was good.” **

He's also a big fan of Pullman's work, too. "Lewis was just fun, up for trying different things," Russell recalls. "He was excellent. He's what the commercial has to offer in terms of going from zero to hero, and that's the fun of what we had to offer, I think."

And, like Russell and Pollack before him, Cruise has since passed on his passion for flight to another actor: his *Maverick* costar Glen Powell. The *Running Man *actor revealed in a 2020 Instagram post that Cruise personally paid for him to obtain his pilot’s license and thanked him for "being my hype man every step of the way."**

“For Christmas, Tom bought me an iPad with my flight school downloaded and prepaid,” Powell wrote. “And yesterday, after months of flying, studying, and testing... I’m the real deal.”

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