Even at a time when superhero movies dominate Hollywood, is playing a spy considered a step-up from playing a comic book character? I ask because we have seen several actors make that exact transition lately — such as (to name only a few examples) the DCEU’s Superman, Henry Cavill, joining the Mission: Impossible movies and Pom Klementieff (Guardians of the Galaxy’s Mantis) doing the same thing with the most recent installment, Dead Reckoning - Part One, which also starred Hayley Atwell, whose MCU role, Peggy Carter, already counted as a spy. The latest example of this phenomenon is Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot playing the lead of action thriller, Heart of Stone.
The new Netflix original movie from director Tom Harper follows a top-secret organization of highly skilled operatives called Charter, whose coveted artificial intelligence weapon — known as “The Heart” — is hacked out of their possession by a ruthless enemy. This forces Gadot’s character to embark on a dangerous mission to retrieve it before it's used for the wrong purpose. Before you use your Netflix subscription to check it all out yourself, we'll explain more about this role and that of the rest of the Heart of Stone cast in this breakdown of who plays whom and where you might have seen them before.
Gal Gadot (Rachel Stone)
Leading the Heart of Stone cast as the titular, heroic secret agent, Rachel Stone, is Gal Gadot, who last starred in a Netflix original action flick as the villain of the Red Notice cast, alongside her former Fast and Furious movies co-star, Dwayne Johnson, and Criminal co-star, Ryan Reynolds. She also previously played a spy in the 2016 comedy, Keeping Up with the Joneses, and, that same year, starred in yet another action thriller called Triple 9.
The 2004 winner of Miss Israel — who was also in 2022’s Death on the Nile cast — previously claimed she was set to play the princess of Themyscira for a seventh time in an upcoming DC movie before subsequent reports revealed Wonder Woman 3 is not in development at the moment. She is also playing the Evil Queen in an upcoming live-action remake of Snow White, has a sequel to Red Notice in the works, will embody Egyptian queen Cleopatra in an upcoming biopic.
Jamie Dornan (Parker)
As the leader of an MI6 team Stone infiltrates named Parker, we have Jamie Dornan, whose closest previous instances of playing a spy are the World War II-era docudrama, Anthropoid, from 2016 and the role of the lovesick Edgar, whose spontaneous dance number was one of the funniest moments from Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar in 2021. Speaking of lovesick, the actor is, of course, best known for starring in the Fifty Shades of Gray movies as Christian Gray.
The Irish actor’s versatile career following the spicy trilogy includes more romance (such as 2020’s Wild Mountain Thyme), more thrillers (like the recent time travel favorite, Synchronic, and Max original series, The Tourist), and even more musicals (having joined the Trolls: World Tour voice cast). Also in 2023, Dornan is reuniting with his Academy Award-winning Belfast director, Kenneth Branagh, for his third Agatha Christie adaptation, A Haunting in Venice.
Alia Bhatt (Keya Dhawan)
In order to protect the Heart, Stone goes to war with ruthless, expert hacker Keya Dhawan. The villainous role is the first English-language title for Indian actor and singer, Alia Bhatt.
This is not Bhatt’s first collaboration with Netflix, however, having starred in the Academy Award winning thriller, RRR — which the platform acquired the streaming rights to — and, also in 2022, leading the dark, Hindi-language dramedy, Darlings. Those are just two of many Indian-based titles available on the streamer which star Bhatt, such as Dear Zindagi and Shaandaar.
Matthias Schweighöfer (Jack Of Hearts)
As “Jack of Hearts” — who gets his name from being the tech specialist for Stone’s organization that works closely with eponymous A.I. — we have Matthias Schweighöfer, who is yet another Netflix movie veteran in the cast. He became more relatively well-known in 2021 after starring in writer and director Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead cast as safecracker Ludwig Dieter, whom he reprised the same year in the prequel, Army of Thieves, which he also directed, before starring in the 2022 sports biopic, The Swimmers.
The German actor — a star in his home country from both behind and in front of the camera since his teens — actually made his English language debut in 2002’s FearDotCom and starred alongside Tom Cruise in 2008’s Valkyrie. Speaking of World War II-era historical dramas, Schweighöfer more recently appeared in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer cast as theoretical physicist, Werner Heisenberg.
Sophie Okonedo (Nomad)
The role of Nomad (otherwise known to Charter as “King of Hearts”) is played by Sophie Okonedo, who last worked with Heart of Stone director, Tom Harper, in 2018’s Wild Rose and last starred alongside Gadot in Death on the Nile. She also has previous associations with Netflix, having appeared on the British limited series, Wanderlust, the UK version of Criminal, and a few episodes of the Sarah Paulson-led villain origin story, Ratched.
The British actor also played a princess in 1995’s Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Will Smith’s wife in M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth from 2013, and also has a previous spy movie under her belt called Stormbreaker — based on the young adult novel by Anthony Horowitz. However, Okonedo is best known for her Academy Award-nominated role in 2004’s Hotel Rwanda.
Paul Ready (Max Bailey)
Stone forms a close bond with MI6 driver and communications operative Max Bailey, who is played by Okonedo’s Flack co-star, Paul Ready. Like most of the cast, the British actor also has a few other Netflix exclusives under his belt already — namely the limited series action thriller Bodyguard, the 2021 historical drama, The Dig, and the recent, short-lived fantasy series, The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself.
Ready was also on the the original version of Utopia (which was updated for American audiences by Amazon Prime), the first season of AMC’s seasonal horror anthology series, The Terror, and is one of the main star of the British sitcom, Motherland. Some of his most notable feature-length credits include his 1995 acting debut, Angels and Insects, and the 2017 historical satire, The Death of Stalin.
Jing Lusi (Theresa Yang)
Deadly MI6 gunslinger, Theresa Yang, is played by Jing Lusi, whose own previous collaboration with Netflix is a far lighter and funnier series called Man vs. Bee, starring Rowan Atkinson, but she, coincidentally, also starred in a 2021 action thriller called SAS: Red Notice, which has nothing to do with Gadot’s aforementioned movie. Her best known role to date, however, comes from another popular comedy, having appeared in 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians cast as Amanda Ling.
The Chinese-born, English-raised actor actually has a few other action-packed titles on her resume, such as 2015’s Survivor, co-creator Stan Lee’s British sci-fi series, Lucky Man, the AMC+ exclusive, Gangs of London, and a spy series with ties to DC Comics called Pennyworth. She more recently lent her voice to the English-language version of animated series, Jade Armor, is set to re-enter the spy genre alongside another DC actor, Henry Cavill, in the Argylle cast for Apple TV+.
It is interesting how many links between superhero movies and spy movies can be found among the Heart of Stone cast alone, but you could probably say that about any movie or any genre these days. See how Gal Gadot saves the day this time without her indestructible gauntlets or Lasso of Truth when you stream Heart of Stone on Netflix now.
