After six years of playing Amazon warrior Wonder Woman in the fictional land Themyscira, actress Gal Gadot is ready to bring the action back to Earth with the spy thriller, Heart Of Stone.
Since making her acting debut in the 2008 drama, Bubot, Gadot has played many tough female characters such as Gisele Yashar in the Fast And Furious franchise, agent Natalie Jones in Keeping Up With The Joneses and Sarah Black in Red Notice.
In Heart Of Stone, the 38-year-old adds another action heroine to her list as she plays intelligence operative Rachel Stone – a role that is already being hailed as the “female James Bond”.
She also doubles as a producer for the film.
Speaking with StarLifestyle in June, Gadot said it was the groundbreaking success of the Wonder Woman franchise that sparked her interest in creating more female-led action films.
“After the success of Wonder Woman, I realised that there was an audience for these types of films… that there’s room for more female-driven action films. So this gave me the confidence to start this project and develop it,” she said.
Gadot is best known for her performance as Diana Prince in the ‘Wonder Woman’ franchise.
During StarLifestyle’s exclusive interview, the actress expressed love for the spy-action genre, citing the James Bond, Mission: Impossible, Die Hard and Bourne franchises as some of her favourites.
While Gadot found inspiration in these films, she reiterated in the production notes that she refuses to piggyback on its success by gender-swapping the male leads to create a heroine.
Instead, she told StarLifestyle that she strives to create more original roles that spotlight women’s strength, intelligence and complex personality in “their own right” – something she believes Heart Of Stone delivers.
“I love Rachel because she’s a woman of many contradictions.
“She’s, on the one hand, an incredible spy and agent but at the same time, she’s having a hard time working with the system and the rules. She’s a loose cannon but she’s very methodical in everything that she does.
“I felt like she had so many different layers to play with that would make her character very delicious to me,” Gadot said with a smile.
Gadot hopes to create more roles that spotlight women’s intelligence, beauty and strength. Photo: Chris Baker/NetflixRaising the bar
Despite having a long list of action roles in her impressive portfolio, Gadot never gets tired of getting her hands dirty.
She has jumped from motorcycles to moving cars in Fast Five and was pulled by her waist and shoulders at a high speed in Wonder Woman 1984.
For her role in Heart Of Stone, Gadot’s character can be seen engaging in close combat, getting in a motorcycle chase and skipping across an exploding blimp in the sky.
To minimise the use of CGI, director Tom Harper made sure to keep the big stunts grounded and realistically achievable in real life.
“It’s really important that (Rachel) felt human rather than some sort of superhero. We wanted it to be as big, dramatic and impactful as it could be, where everything should be possible, but only just barely possible,” he said in the production notes.
Of the sequence where Stone runs across an exploding blimp, Gadot – who has a black belt in karate – told Empire magazine that she spent time in a wind tunnel trying to replicate the vertiginous conditions of the scene.
Ever the perfectionist, the actress told StarLifestyle that she trained for months to refine her stunt work.
“It’s funny because every film that I do, I feel like this is the most action I’m going to do. And then comes the next one and the bar goes even higher.
“With this one, the bar went up but we had such fantastic stunt teams. I’m lucky I got to work with several people from my previous films, so it’s like a second family.
“And it was intense. We had action scenes taking place on a snowy mountain, up in the air, in the desert and in so many different locations. It was a lot,” she said.
Gadot, who has a black belt in karate, spent months training to refine her stunt work.
Speaking of filming in multiple locations, Heart Of Stone was shot in five countries – Britain, Portugal, Italy, Iceland and Morocco.
Shooting Heart Of Stone in different locations was necessary to get audiences visually interested, the actress said in the production notes.
“I like to think of going to the movies as an opportunity to experience interesting places.
“Beyond great action, you get to see these locations you may not otherwise experience. Quite literally, it’s the perfect getaway movie!” she said.
Heart Of Stone is now streaming on Netflix.
