When Henry Czerny started appearing in Hollywood movies, you could be forgiven for thinking he had a type: the suspicious government agent. In his first mainstream movie, Clear and Present Danger, Czerny portrayed American agent Robert Ritter opposite Harrison Ford’s Jack Ryan. Soon enough, he’d face off against another swaggering American star as another suspicious spy, CIA Director Eugene Kittridge in the Tom Cruise-starring 1996 film Mission: Impossible. 25 years later, as the original film celebrates its anniversary, Czerny is finally returning to the fold as Kittridge in the upcoming seventh installment.
/Film sat down virtually with Czerny to talk about his experience working on the first film, facing off against Tom Cruise in a restaurant doubling as an aquarium, and why he wondered if he talked himself out of being in the second film in 2000.