Hollywood heavyweight Tom Cruise has spent a long time lamenting the early demise of Emilio Estevez‘s character in Mission Impossible.

According to Uproxx, the vintage tea was still hot when The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers star recalled the first time Cruise broached the topic in 1997.

“Tom was like, we were doing a run the year after that, and he says, ‘Man, we made such a mistake killing you off.’”

Though Uncredited, Estevez played IMF agent Jack Harmon in the first installment of the Mission: Impossible film franchise. However, there were reasons why he met his fate early on in the movie. Estevez explains:

“The way Tom had explained it, he said, ‘Look, I’d love for you to come and join the cast. The whole opening number where everybody gets wiped out, it’s going to be a lot of well-known people and all of them are going to go uncredited and it’s really going to set up the level of peril for Ethan.’ And I said, ‘I’m in. You don’t have to ask me twice, I’m in.’”

The Top Gun: Maverick star holds Estevez in high esteem for good reason as the actors share a long and colorful history.  Although he is currently best known for his portrayal of Coach Gordon Bombay in The Mighty Ducks franchise, Estevez has been making movies for half a century. He began his career in an uncredited role in the Terrence Mallick film Badlands which starred his father, Martin Sheen, and Academy Award winner Sissy Spacek. 

A decade later, Estevez was one of the brightest stars in Hollywood’s constellation, starring in film classics like The Outsiders, The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire, and Young Guns. He became the reigning member of an elite group of young actors who dominated the box office in the 1980s. The media called them The Brat Pack, counting Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Michael Hall among its ranks.

Estevez has also had a distinguished career behind the camera as a screenwriter and director of television projects, like Cold Case and CSI: NY, and films including Men at Work and the critically acclaimed The Way. 

The Way is scheduled for re-release on May 16.