Jennifer Connelly pretended to be fine with flying when Tom Cruise offered to take her for a spin in a vintage plane during the filming of Top Gun: Maverick.
During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday night, the actress confessed she has a fear of flying, despite starring as Cruise's love interest Penny Benjamin in the action drama about pilots - the sequel to 1986's Top Gun.
"I'm not a big fan of flying and I actually went through a stage when I was incredibly bad at flying. It was very traumatic for me and anyone near me on an aeroplane," she stated, before recalling how Cruise once convinced her to be a passenger in his plane.
"We were just supposed to be sitting on the tarmac and he starts talking to me about this plane, it's a P51, it's a vintage plane... it happens to be his plane. And (he asks), 'Have I ever done any acrobatic flying, and am I interested in acrobatic flying?' And I start to become suspicious that I'm going to be doing acrobatic flying."
But rather than admit to her phobia, Connelly decided to play it cool.
"I didn't say, 'Hold on wait, I have a terrible fear of flying,' I said, 'Yeah, that's cool. I'm ready,'" the 51-year-old laughed, noting that she ended up having a memorable experience. "It was dawn and we were in the desert and it was kind of beautiful."
Elsewhere in the conversation, Connelly praised Cruise's enthusiasm and also revealed that he requested they reshoot a sequence they shared on a boat as it wasn't exciting enough.
"We filmed that sequence twice. We filmed first time outside of San Diego and it was very beautiful and lovely shots and there were dolphins even swimming beside us. And Tom was like, 'Yeah, this isn't fast enough,'" she smiled. "So, we redid the scene and went to San Francisco, for the rough weather, for the wind."
Top Gun: Maverick opens in U.S. cinemas on 27 May.
