Rebecca Ferguson has branded Tom Cruise a "man child" but "in a good way"

She told The Times newspaper: "You don't have scripts and have no idea where it's going to go, which is annoying and tedious and glorious.

"You train for a stunt scene for months and all of a sudden they cut it ...

"[Cruise is] a man-child in a good way. I often joke that there's someone with a tranquilliser gun and a net looking for him.

"It's frustrating because you're ready to shoot and the sun's going down. Tom goes: 'What are we waiting for?' and I go: 'You!' And he laughs and goes, 'F***, I'm sorry'."

Ferguson played Ilsa Faust in the franchise, but she was killed off in 2023 installment Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One and the actress told The Times she agreed it was time for her to bow out because "there was nothing more to do" with her character.

Ferguson recently worked with screenwriter Steven Knight on Peaky Blinders spin-off movie The Immortal Man and she later found out he'd been given the job of penning the next James Bond film.

She admitted she would have pestered him for a part if she'd known about his plans at the time because it's her dream to play a Bond villain.

Rebecca said: "I would have been pushing to play the baddie. We haven't had a female Bond villain."

The actress also worked with the new Bond movie's director - Denis Villeneuve - on the Dune franchise and Rebecca revealed she's also spoken to him about the possibility of a female baddie in the next 007 offering.

She told the publication: "I already said that to Denis - 'Female Bond villain, b****!' He was like: 'Oh la la'."

Rebecca added of the Bond franchise: "I love the Bonds, most of them, but I often found that they weren't very good at writing for women."

However, she has high hopes for Knight's screenplay, saying: "He wrote [Maria Callas biopic] Maria for Angelina Jolie - he's written loads of good female roles."