"I did take it quite literally," she tells Parade exclusively, "I have stolen several things from the set: a salt and pepper shaker, an ashtray, a watch, a necklace, some documents, a fossil, some fake glass."
The allure was less in Tom Cruise's specially brewed hot sauce ("I tried it on the edge of my tongue," Atwell recalls, "And I was like, 'Okay, that's enough. I'm done.' It was pretty intense.") but more in the thrill of using her newly found skills. "I'm quite, quite nifty at the old hand tricks," she says.
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Hayley Atwell in Mission: Impossible — The Final ReckoningParamount Pictures
"For the first five months, I was working with the stunt team on drifting in a car," she remembers about the beginning of her training for Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning. "We spent a lot of time on the racetrack, learning how to drift. A lot of running, because I knew I'd be running with Tom and looking at the form of that. A lot of fight sequences, choreography that involved pickpocketing and slight of hand tricks. Working with knives and just creating a sense where my body was physically capable of doing things repetitively without strain, being really mobile."
When Mission: Impossible decided to set a scene in the arctic on a dogsled, the cast and crew headed to the northern recesses of Norway to film with actual dogs, a move many franchises would have certainly opted out of in favor of a studio and CGI.
While polar bears would occasionally wreak havoc on the filming schedule, one also got up close and personal with Atwell and co. at night on their ship. "We went upstairs on the deck, and we saw this polar bear that had stood on its hind legs and put its paws on the side of the ship," she remembers. "We just watched it walk around the side of the ship before it lost interest and eventually walked off knowing it probably couldn't get access to us, thank god."
Related: We Ranked All Eight 'Mission: Impossible' Movies, Including 'The Final Reckoning'
Hayley Atwell plays Grace in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.Paramount Pictures
In addition to one-of-a-kind stunts, the Mission: Impossible franchise is also unique in its scripting process, with a more build-as-you-go strategy than something that's firmly set in stone. When director Christopher McQuarrie initially approached Atwell about joining the team (he'd been impressed by her work on stage years prior), she was brought in for not only a two-hour-long stunt audition, but also a creative jam session of sorts with Cruise.
Due to the real-time creation, Atwell's Grace doesn't come with a backstory. "It doesn't matter what her past is, so much as whatever we're creating in the present moment can then dictate decisions we want to make about her backstory," Atwell says of the character.
Even within her individual scenes, she can't be sure of what's happening. "There is an understanding that because I'm creating in real time with them, there'll be different versions of it," she says. "So I'll play Grace in one way then I might try playing her in a different way. There'll be scenes where she goes off in this direction, and scenes where she does something very different in the story. We're always just looking at how I can expand the range of ideas so that there was a lot for them to play with in the edit when they want to put it all together."
Related: Hayley Atwell Says Tom Cruise Inspired Her to Do All Her Own 'Mission: Impossible' Stunts Too
Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt, Pom Klementieff plays Paris, Greg Tarzan Davis plays Degas, Simon Pegg plays Benji Dunn and Hayley Atwell plays Grace in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.Paramount Pictures
When asked what she thought her character Grace would be up to post-Final Reckoning, Atwell responds, "I think she's carrying on, traveling the world, picking people's pockets and getting herself into all sorts of trouble."
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning is now playing in theaters.
Related: He's a Maverick, for Sure! We Ranked the 25 Best Tom Cruise Movies of All Time
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