How Tom Cruise Brought Trafalgar Square To A Standstill

There’s not many movies stars who would be able to carry off bringing  one of London’s busiest locations to a grinding halt.

But as you might recall from photos appearing in newspapers across the planet, Tom Cruise managed it last year while filming sci-fi actioner ’Edge of Tomorrow’ in the capital.

Here the cast and the prematurely aged location crew look back at how they managed to pull off the audacious move, one which dared to collide with the legendarily irascible London commuter.

The plan was to have cruise fly into the centre of London and land the RAF chopper on precisely the spot where, just a few days later, the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree was to be erected.

Supervising location manager Sue Quinn (“My first thought was ‘Oh my god’,” she recalls) was the crew-member to bear the brunt of this request, but by some coup managed to secure permission to close the area off for three hours and set up 14 cameras in the historic tourist hotspot.

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"One thing you get when you’ve got Tom Cruise in a film, is that people really like Tom Cruise. People see him, they light up. Places we thought we would never get permission to film gave us unprecedented access,” said director Doug Liman.

"In the history of England, a helicopter has never landed in Trafalgar Square.

"It’s the most incredible place I’ve ever made a film. Everything about working out of London helped me make a better movie.”

"To be able to land that helicopter, it was one of those extraordinary moments,” reckons Cruise.

'Edge of Tomorrow' is out on 3D, Blu-ray and DVD from October 13.