Characters / Spy

CIA Agents

Susan Cooper

Played by: Melissa McCarthy

A CIA desk jockey who serves as true agents mission control, Susan gets sent into the field when the CIA needs agents that terrorists will not recognize.

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• The Ace: This ultimately the trope the movie plays with. Susan is a great agent, resourceful, skilled, smart, ferocious in combat. She's mostly held back by her own lack of confidence, and everyone around her being unable to see her for how skilled she is.
• Acrofatic: Despite not being exactly willow-thin, Susan can pull some moves in a fight that would make Black Widow proud.
• Action Girl: Becomes one over the course of the film.
• Badass Bookworm: She's one of the top CIA analysts. She is also a capable driver and an excellent shot, and can take on trained bodyguards with ease.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Susan is typically sweet and mild-mannered, but hurt the people she loves and you're in for a world of pain. Bradley is surprised by her twice, first when she unleashes her foul mouth to Rayna and then when she single-handedly defeats all of DeLuca's henchmen.
• Big Beautiful Woman: While most of her outfits are less than flattering, once she's allowed to clean up and go for more stylish attire, she quickly attracts positive attention from men, and turns out to be quite the Dude Magnet.
• Combat Pragmatist: As is standard for a spy, Susan has no issue fighting dirty or using whatever weapons she can get.
• Crazy Cat Lady: Her second secret identity of "Penny Morgan", a single woman from Iowa so fond of cats that she even wears a T-shirt printed with a tacky cat image. However, she soon ditches this image in her 'Penny' identity to infiltrate the Casino di Roma.
• Deadpan Snarker: It doesn't take long before having to put up with Ford and Rayna brings out the snarker in Susan. By the third act, just about everything she says to Ford is sarcastic.
• The Determinator: Susan is only tasked with a track-and-report, but each time she is able to get valuable intel, it makes her more confident she can do more than simply surveillance and bravely pushes onward.
• Dude Magnet: By the end of the movie, three guys are after Susan Cooper: Aldo, Bradley Fine, and even Rick Ford.
• Extreme Doormat: Fine gets her to run errands outside of work and fire his gardener for him (because he allegedly kept running over the sprinklers with the lawnmower).
  • She can't fire Fine's gardener Jaime after she sees a picture of his kids and he serenades her. She ends up mowing the lawn as Jaime watches, pleased.
  • Elaine deduces that Susan never became a field agent despite graduating first of her class at The Farm because Bradley Fine smooth talked her into applying for a desk job so she'd not overshadow him and that's something that happens to female agents all the time (making her sigh "Women..."). His surprise at later seeing how much ass Susan kicks might imply he genuinely didn't know how much better she'd be at field work.
• Friendly Enemy: She becomes this to Rayna despite all the insults they trade. As Rayna is led away she and Susan trade a final round of insults before smiling at each other.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Susan uses several both as shields and bludgeoning weapons in her fight against Lia.
• Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist: Susan's CIA-given disguises as "Carol Jenkins" and "Penny Morgan" are caricatures of stereotypical and uncultured American tourists from the Midwest, complete with tacky dress sense. Susan herself is frustrated by these disguises, which she is still subject to at the movie's end.
• Hidden Depths: She's a surprisingly competent fighter. Elaine is shocked to see the video of her combat training at The Farm showing her taking down dummies — and her instructor — in a rather brutal manner.
  Elaine: So imagine my surprise when I pull up this footage from The Farm. [cue video of Susan laying waste to a target room and instructors trying to calm her down] I must have watched this fifteen times, because what the fuck?! I almost put it up on YouTube!
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Emotional variety. Susan recounts how her mother would consistently encourage Susan to have no aspirations or ambitions and never try to excel. Down to even writing "Give Up On Your Dreams!" in her lunchbox. It's implied to be the cause of Susan's own self-confidence issues.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: She turns out to be this for Fine all along, as she's more than capable of handling herself in the field.
• Improvised Weapon: Susan uses everything she can to fight off the Elite Mook in the kitchen, from frying pans to baguettes to lettuce.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: Comes with being portrayed by Melissa McCarthy.
• Meet My Good Friends Lefty and Righty: At one point, Susan refers to her fists as Cagney & Lacey.
• Mock Cousteau: One of her aliases in the Creative Closing Credits.
• Nice Girl: Susan is generally mild-mannered, friendly and sweet-natured.
• One-Woman Army: Susan obviously has become this by the end of the movie. Cemented by the credits, which briefly shows glimpses of field missions she undertakes in the future for the CIA. There's a lot.
• Rogue Agent: She goes off the grid to pursue Rayna, although she tells the CIA afterwards and they send her backup.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Throughout the movie Ford and Susan do nothing but complain and insult each other, but by the end Ford compliments her and recognizes her as a competent spy after all and The Stinger even shows that they slept with each other! (although Susan didn't seem too happy about it... at least until the second stinger).
• Stout Strength: She's heavy set but quite strong and very skilled in combat.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: She winds up destroying the mook who almost blows her cover by kicking him in the balls, stabbing him in the gut, breaking his foot, pushing him off a balcony, causing him to be impaled by rebar at the bottom, vomiting on the corpse once she sees what she's done, and then accidentally dropping his knife down below and sticks him. She finally faints.
• Wrestler in All of Us: She pulls off both a German suplex and a hurricarana.

Bradley Fine

Played by: Jude Law

A classic Bond-style spy and Susan's usual in-field counterpart, Bradely's death — or so it seems — sets off the plot.

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• Amazon Chaser: See his reaction when Susan kicks the shit out of De Luca's men all by herself. Relevant considering he spent most of the movie being completely obvious of her crush on him:
  Fine: Holy. Shit.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Played with, but ultimately averted. It's implied that Fine intentionally convinced Susan to become his Mission Control support instead of a fellow agent because he didn't want her to potentially show him up. Despite this, after the reveal, he's actually not dismissive of Susan's feats like Ford is and did legitimately value Susan as his support. He also saves her life multiple times during the mission, even at the risk of blowing his cover. Ultimately, due to Fine's limited screen time, he's open to a lot of Alternate Character Interpretation.
• Bond One-Liner: Fine of course drops these on missions, much to Susan's delight
• Catchphrase: He has a habit of saying "who's the Fine-st of them all?" in the field.
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: He appears to side with Rayna when Susan is captured, but later reveals that he is still working in the CIA's interests, having secretly saved Susan by killing Karen.
• Fake Defector: He fakes his death because he can't get in deep enough if the CIA knows.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: In the opening scene, he accidentally shoots the terrorist he's interrogating in the head as a result of an ill-timed sneeze.
• Nice Guy: He is a genuinely kind and supportive colleague to Susan. His false betrayal of the CIA solidifies this.
• Oblivious to Love: To Susan. Although the earlier scenes of the film suggest that Fine could be purposely manipulating Susan's feelings for him, the scene at De Luca's villa heavily implies otherwise. Susan says she's in love with Fine and he never knew at De Luca's villa, in front of Fine, to convince Rayna and De Luca she's not loyal to the CIA and only wants to keep him alive. Fine's Reaction Shot shows that he's surprised, but quite sincerely touched by this. That scene, plus his conversation with Susan after the nuke retrieval, particularly support the interpretation that he was not purposely taking advantage of her, but rather was truly unaware of her feelings all along.
• Tuxedo and Martini: Befitting a Bond parody, Bradley somehow appears in all his missions wearing a full tuxedo outfit. He even has a martini in the restaurant scene.

Rick Ford

Played by: Jason Statham

An arrogant, grandstanding CIA agent who thoroughly disapproves of Susan, and whose inflated ego gets in the heroes way throughout the film.

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• 10-Minute Retirement: He quits the CIA when Susan is given clearance to go on the field. Elaine's reaction implies he's done this several times for other perceived slights.
• Adam Westing: Jason Statham as CIA agent Rick Ford, a parody of his usual Action Genre Hero Guy roles. Ford recounts surviving fatal injuries (which Susan lampshades as medically impossible) and having all his loved ones killed in front of him on various missions. But his guts don't mean competence.
  Susan: I can see your gun sticking out of your back pocket, unless you're so extreme you have a second dick growing out of your hip.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: During one of his Badass Boasts where he lists things he's done that no one thought possible, he states that he learned to "walk through fire, waterski blindfolded, take up piano at a late age."
• Badass Boast: Parodied; he makes one boast after another about his badass past to the point of absurdity.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Seems to honestly believe in some of his claims about his past even as Susan points out how many are impractical or outright impossible.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: Ford is implied to be this when a random woman in the CIA basement mentions that his penis is bigger than the mook's in his dick pics and Ford informs Cooper that she liked having sex with him the night before during The Stinger when she starts yelling in horror and surprise upon finding out that she slept with him.
• Blatant Lies: His Badass Boast is clearly nothing more than a delusion.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: It's not entirely clear just how much Rick Ford is deliberately exaggerating and how much he's delusional, but he does in all earnestness believe that the CIA has a Face/Off machine even after being told it doesn't exist. He carries around a Louis Vuitton backpack for no discernible reason, and his last plan involves taking a speedboat down to various Mediterranean countries without realizing that the boat he's taking is in a landlocked lake until moments later.
• The Comically Serious: Ford is completely serious at all times, even when describing previous achievements which are improbable or just outright impossible and sincerely believing the FBI has face swapping technology.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Parodied as he outlines a ridiculous and over the top backstory for himself that includes both his parents being blown up and the women he loved "being thrown from a plane and hit by another plan mid-air".
• Establishing Character Moment: During a meeting with his boss and fellow agents, he loudly and coarsely tries to insist that he go on a mission despite being compromised, and when this is pointed out, he suggests, in total seriousness, that he use the Face/Off machine to change his appearance in order to go undercover.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: It becomes apparent over the course of the film that he's been exaggerating how much of a badass he is as his cover frequently gets blown and he ends up becoming The Load to Susan, who needs to rescue him on numerous occasions.
• Idiot Hero: He's supposed to be an expert CIA Field agent, but has nearly gotten himself killed because of utter incompetence.
• Irony: He regularly puts Susan down, calling her a secretary and unsuited for field work. However, given how often he messes up in the field himself as well as the fact that he manages to keep on the trail of the case despite being cut off from the CIA's information network, it seems that he'd work out excellently as a desk agent instead of on the field.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's a brash, abrasive guy that seems to just be constantly angry for no discernible reason and doesn't particularly care for Fine or Cooper, but he has no problem with wanting to avenge Fine's death and in his own way doesn't want to see Cooper come to any harm and even comes to like and respect her by the end.
• Large Ham: Jason Statham was clearly having a blast in the role.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: There's a brief mention of Ford becoming a naturalized citizen so Jason Statham can keep his British accent.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: He infiltrates a dance club wearing glasses and a fake mustache.
  Susan: You look like a perverted bus driver!
• Politically Incorrect Hero: He makes a number of sexist and insulting comments to both Cooper and Elaine.
• Rogue Agent: Ford, offended that Elaine let Susan go after Rayna instead of him, goes rogue and sets off on the mission on his own.
• Serial Escalation: The more Rick Ford recounts his various exploits, the more ridiculously impossible and over-the-top they seem.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Ford can barely go three sentences without cursing a blue streak, regardless of his mood. His very first line includes the words "fuck" and "twat".
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Throughout the movie Ford and Susan do nothing but complain and insult each other, but by the end Ford compliments her and recognizes her as a competent spy after all and The Stinger even shows that they slept with each other! (although Susan didn't seem too happy about it... at least until the second stinger).
• Small Name, Big Ego: Clearly thinks he's a badass super spy in the Bond/Bourne vein when he's largely incompetent and borderline delusional.
• Smug Snake: For all of his bravado, he is often the butt of everyone's jokes and portrayed as generally incompetent on the field. He is easily stalked by De Luca's men, falls victim to a bag swap, is instantly recognised by Reyna, knocks himself out trying to stop De Luca, and slips while trying to climb onto the helicopter. It extends even to his own colleagues - his boss' reaction to him quitting in protest is "That hasn't happened before", his colleagues trick him into believing the CIA has a hidden Face/Off machine.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He claims to have (or just thinks he has) this kind of relationship with Fine, whom he calls a "dear friend", only for Susan to remind Ford that he calls Fine "Beverly Whine" and once bought him tampons as a Secret Santa gift, which Ford attributes to "a rivalry of men".
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Seems to think he's the the lead in a typical Licence to Kill style action film where he'll go on a rogue mission to avenge his fallen friend when he's really in a comedy film and is nowhere near the super spy he imagines he is. Susan even takes a moment to point that Ford didn't even like Fine and was a dick to him as well which Ford brushes off.

Karen Walker

Played by: Morena Baccarin

A highly accomplished CIA agent.

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• The Ace: Susan and Nancy note that, along with her perfect looks and wealth, she's also been on more successful missions than Fine. And when they scoff that she's so full of herself, she wouldn't even know who they are, Karen comes up and addresses them by name.
• Affably Evil: Even after being outed as The Mole, she positively remarks on Susan's makeover and apologizes before trying to shoot her in the head.
• Boom, Headshot!: Fine puts a bullet in her head from afar to save Susan.
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: She initially betrays the CIA to Rayna, then later tries to kill Rayna under De Luca's orders.
• Foreshadowing: At the first act when she is introduced, she announces that she’ll be going on a vacation. Guess who Susan chases in Budapest after an assassination attempt on Rayna.
• The Mole: She's the one who sold the list of CIA agents' names to Rayna, and she turns up working for De Luca as well.

CIA Staff

Elaine Crocker

Played by: Allison Janney

The head of operations at the CIA and Susan, Bradley and Ford's boss.

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• Berserk Button: Being called "Betty Crocker". When Ford calls her "Betty", she threatens to rip his heart out.
• Deadpan Snarker: Having a blustering idiot like Ford for an employee would make anyone sarcastic.
  Ford: Here's what we do: I go into the Face/Off machine, get a whole new face. They'll never know it's me.
  Crocker: Do you have quarters, 'cause it costs 50 cents.
  Ford: What, I've got to pay?
  Crocker: No, because it doesn't exist.
• No Sense of Humor: She claims to not have one when she gives Susan yet another humiliating cover ID even after she proves herself as a skilled agent.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Despite her droll putdowns of Susan in the beginning, she OK's Susan's plan to track Rayna and DeLuca undercover and allows her to stay in the field as she proves her worth.

Nancy Artingstall

Played by: Miranda Hart

Susan's best friend and coworker.

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• Big Damn Heroes: At the end when she deputizes 50 Cent.
• The Confidant: She's Susan's closest friend and sounding board.
• Fangirl: She's excited to be involved with major field work.
• Non-Action Guy: Gender Flipped, and she admits it.
  Nancy: I'm very non-physically resourceful.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: She works a computer at headquarters and provides Susan with information and such.

Criminals

Rayna Boyanova

Played by: Rose Byrne

An arrogant criminal boss seeking to sell a suitcase nuke on the black market, Rayna is the movie's primary villain and Susan's main foe.

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• Bad Boss: She's a horrible boss and treats her henchmen as entirely disposable. She's also incapable of learning their names or telling them apart. It comes back to bite her when she quickly runs out of loyal henchmen due to either killing them off or them trying to sell her out because working for her is such a headache.
• The Baroness: Rayna is very much the sexpot version. Susan being who she is, this doesn't impress her much.
• Big Bad: Rayna is presented as this, having exposed the identities of CIA operatives, killed Bradley and trying to sell the nuke. A Chechen terrorist is also hinted at as a Greater-Scope Villain interested in the nuke. However, the true Big Bad is revealed to be De Luca, who intends to steal the nuke for himself and sell it at a higher price.
• Big Bad Wannabe: What she actually is. Her Bad Boss tendencies mean that she's killed off any competent underlings on top of being utterly inept as a villain. She only stays alive because Susan Took a Level in Badass and kept saving her until she could find the nuke she planning to sell.
• Daddy's Little Villain: She inherits her father's crime syndicate, and his ruthlessness too, at least where her own mooks are involved. Pity that experience isn't inheritable, as it's soon clear that she's in deep over her head — if it weren't for CIA intervention on multiple occasions she'd have been killed.
• Didn't Think This Through: Rayna killing her own men left and right every time they do something wrong leaves her with nobody competent enough or willing to look after her safety.
• Faux Affably Evil: Rayna initially uses a polite, if haughty, tone while dealing with Susan, but the facade is paper-thin (she even insults Susan before dropping the polite tone), and as soon as things have stopped going her way, she's constantly cursing and putting people down.
• Friendly Enemy: She becomes this to Susan despite all the insults they trade. As Rayna is led away she and Susan trade a final round of insults before smiling at each other.
• Jerkass: A haughty and foul-mouthed Bad Boss who insults seemingly everyone she exchanges a word with. The only person she shows any amount of respect is Susan, and even that comes in-between bouts of insults.
• Meaningful Name: "Reyna" is a derivative of "Reina", which means "Queen" in Spanish, and the haughty, commanding and demanding Reyna certainly acts the part.
• Smug Snake: She's eventually shown to be this. Despite her haughty demeanor and ruthless attitude, she is mostly dependent on her henchmen to do her dirty work, and is outclassed skills-wise by Bradley and Susan. She even gets outplayed by De Luca, who almost kills her and hijacks the nuke for himself.
• Spy Catsuit: The top half of Rayna's dress during the climax clearly invokes this. Susan says it makes her look like a "slutty dolphin trainer".
• Stupid Evil: Rayna's villainy is ultimately shown to be a weakness. On top of her arrogance, she's killed off any men who might have been loyal to her, or capable of keeping her alive, leaving herself with no allies while surrounded by CIA agents and rival criminals. She ends up needing her enemies to keep saving her as a result.
• Upper-Class Twit: Rayna can't tell her servants apart, to the point where an assassin replaced one of them for six months without her noticing or stopping calling him by the other guys' name. She can't slide a gun on the ground more than a few feet and constantly belittles Susan's clothes even when she's well dressed.
• You Have Failed Me: She seems to make it a policy to execute her mook bodyguards who fail in their duties. This backfires, though: between her executions and enemy action, her entire security detail is at one point reduced to Susan, Nancy and Aldo, all CIA agents—and Bradley Fine, who is himself undercover CIA.
• You Remind Me of X: She says Susan-as-Penny reminds her of both her mother and a sad Bulgarian clown.

Tihomir Boyanov

Rayna's father, who started off the plot to sell the nuke and dies in the beginning of the movie.

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• Bad Boss: It's easy to see where Rayna gets it from; after his men stash the stolen nuke, Boyanov has those henchmen killed by his bodyguards, then immediately kills the bodyguards as well.
• Boom, Headshot!: An unfortunate sneeze (and very poor trigger discipline) causes Fine to accidentally shoot Boyanov in the head while holding him at gunpoint.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: He tries to invoke this by killing the henchmen he had stash the stolen nuke, using the now-exclusive knowledge of the nuke's location as a bargaining chip. How well it would have worked long-term is debatable, but Fine ends up killing him by complete accident anyway.
• Heir Club for Men: He seemingly always wanted a son, and tried to mold his daughter into the child he wanted. Susan uses this to taunt Rayna during one of their confrontations.
• Leave No Witnesses: He has the men who stashed the stolen nuke shot, then kills the men who shot them in order to leave himself (and, as it turns out, Rayna) as the only one who knows where to find it.
• Tempting Fate: He scoffs at Bradley Fine telling him he has 10 seconds to live, seeing as he's the only one who knows where the nuke is and Fine can't afford to harm him. Too bad he didn't count on the dusty room setting off Bradley's allergies...

Sergio De Luca

Played by: Bobby Cannavale

A broker for various criminal and terrorist groups, De Luca has been contracted by Rayna to sell her nuke but has plans of his own for the device.

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• Big Bad: He's playing Rayna for a sucker for the entire movie, all the while planning to betray Rayna, kill Dudaev, and sell the nuke to another buyer for even more money.
• The Chessmaster: He wasn't really going to sell the nuke to Dudaev, and isn't loyal to Rayna. He has another buyer willing to pay more, so he takes the payment and kills Dudaev.
• Disney Villain Death: He suffers this when Susan loosens the toggle on her necklace as he's holding onto it, sending him plummeting to his doom.
• Faux Affably Evil: De Luca is handsome and charming, but he's also thoroughly amoral, greedy, and treacherous. He's all charm and dry wit when dealing with Rayna, whom he quickly betrays and plans to murder, as well as writing off the potential destruction of New York City with a glib remark.
• Greed: His main motivator; after accepting Dudaev's payment of diamonds in exchange for the nuke, De Luca kills him and cheerfully exposits about his plan to sell it again for even more money.

Others

Aldo

Played by: Peter Serafinowicz

A lecherous Italian driver hired by the CIA, who develops a major crush on Susan.

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• Amazon Chaser: Part of his unwanted attention towards Susan is mostly due to how competent of a spy she is:
  Aldo: One day, lady superspy Susan Cooper: I will fuck you.
• Becoming the Mask: ... possibly.
  Albert: [in Italian accent] How do you like my English accent? I learnt it from the Downton Abbey! [in English accent] Just kidding! [in Italian accent] Or am I?
• Black Comedy Rape: He often "unintentionally" gropes Susan.
  Susan: Did you send me the wrong agent?
  Nancy: Aldo? He's the best! *looks at his profile* Oh, no, oh he has had some complaints against him...
• Casanova Wannabe: He flirts constantly with Susan, who is far from impressed. He also hits on another woman, in front of Susan, admitting that he likes to "play the odds" when she calls him on it.
  Susan: Good gravy, was Pepe le Pew not available?
• Chivalrous Pervert: He has the hots for Susan and isn't above ogling her or feeling her up, but on the other hand he genuinely praises her for her performance on the field and is constantly complimenting her.
• Drives Like Crazy: He slaloms through traffic and around curbs like mortality ain't a thing, and even drives down stairs to get Susan to her hotel in a scene vaguely resembling The Bourne Identity.
• Thanks for the Mammary: Invoked when he drives Susan to her hotel.

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