Mission: Impossible’s wire heist is still the most iconic stunt in franchise history

Actor Rolf Saxon recalls playing William Donloe in the first and last Mission: Impossible films

After eight Mission: Impossible films featuring dozens of jaw-dropping action scenes, the harrowing wire heist from the first film remains the most iconic sequence in the entire franchise. In it, Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) must infiltrate a CIA computer kept in a room-sized vault with an extremely sensitive security system — touch the floor, make a sound, or even raise the temperature of the room and alarms will sound. Hunt enters the room suspended on a wire through a vent in the ceiling. While he begins the download successfully, Hunt has to be careful not to get caught by analyst William Donloe (Rolf Saxon) who is in and out of the room due to a stomach illness.

The image of Cruise suspended by a wire in a bright white, octagon-shaped room is part of cinema history, and the tension felt in the scene is unforgettable. That’s why it was such a treat for fans when William Donloe made his surprise return in 2025’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Despite Saxon playing a small part in the original 1996 film, anything that called back to the wire heist was welcome. Also, they found a way for Donloe to play an integral part in the story.

Which is why, for the 30th anniversary of the original Mission: Impossible, Polygon spoke with Saxon about his memories from the first and (probably) last film in the franchise.

“I used to love the Mission: Impossible series,” says Saxon, which is why auditioned for the original film. Once he got the part, things got interesting. “That was one of the first scripts where we were never allowed to see the whole thing.”

Saxon is only in the first film for a few minutes, and much of that shows his character getting sick and going back and forth to the bathroom. In the vault, he only shares a couple of shots with Cruise that only amount to a few seconds, which is why he says, “When you're filming, they take four hours to do two camera angles. So, for a lot of my filming, he wasn't there. He doesn't have to be up there because it's just me in front of a computer screen.”

Still, being on set those days, Saxon watched Cruise perform the stunt and was impressed. “I saw him do it. The only time he used a stuntman for that was when they were setting up lights.”

Given the brevity of his part in that film, Saxon certainly never expected to return to the franchise, which is why he originally assumed being asked to come back nearly 30 years later was a prank.

“I thought it was a friend of mine winding me up,” says Saxon. “There was a series of notifications from my agent saying, ‘There's a film company in Europe that wants to know about your availability,’ then a week or so later I heard it was Skydance. I said, ‘Skydance? Seriously?’ Then he said it was Christopher McQuarrie that wanted to speak with me and I thought, ‘You motherfucker.’ Bill, this friend of mine in Scotland, we wind each other up, and I just thought Bill's doing this. So in the Zoom, I'm sitting there with a T-shirt on and a glass of wine and then McQuarrie comes on the screen. So I put the wine down. He offered me the part, and we spent about an hour talking about it.”

Saxon's role in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning changed several times along the way. Initially, he would have briefly shown up and then vanished in act two of the movie, rather than arriving later in the story and sticking around through the end.

“There was never a script,” he says. “They kept rewriting as they went along. I had a four-page scene, then it became an eight-page scene. Then it developed into a 12 or 14-page scene and we filmed it over two days. The entirety of that scene is gone. They never used it.” Getting into it deeper, Saxon explains that the earlier drafts brought him in sooner, featured a dog, made mention of his children, and had he and his wife Tapeesa (Lucy Tulugarjuk) go “off into the arctic together.” That said, the surprising use of the character was much the same.

In The Final Reckoning, Donloe is initially set up as something of an adversary to Hunt directly because of the wire heist scene. Since it was Donloe’s job to protect the information that Hunt stole, Donloe was transferred to a remote arctic outpost to monitor weather equipment as punishment. Saxon even admits he was looking forward to getting revenge on Cruise's character.

“I was hoping I would be a bad guy because I love doing bad guys,” he says.

However, in the film, Donloe reveals that he's grateful to Hunt because he met his wife in his current position and managed to live a full, peaceful life. Just as the character’s appearance was a surprise, the approach was surprising too, and actually quite sweet. “I loved it. It was great,” says Saxon.

Across both movies, Saxon especially enjoyed working with Tom Cruise, who he says was remarkably unchanged from 1996 to 2025.

“He was very much the same,” says Saxon. “He is an extraordinary filmmaker. This whole thing was his idea and without him, this wouldn't have happened. That takes a special kind of individual.”