20 Declassified Facts About The Mission: Impossible Series
2. M:I3 Had An Entire Fake Filming Unit
Filming in Rome was an unusual challenge for the Mission: Impossible 3 crew. How do you stop 2.5 million people from trying to get a peek at your movie?
Answer: you don't. You set up a dummy filming unit to distract the crowds and shoot your real scenes elsewhere. While Cruise was doing his wire acrobatics in front of famous Roman architecture, the dummy filmmakers hired several young women in bikinis and older women dressed as nuns, and put them in front of the camera.
Sadly, they were only pretending to film. While Mission: Impossible has shown a bikini or two, the "bikinis and nuns sequence" would not be part of any cut of the movie, director's or otherwise.