2 Hearts Cast Guide: Meet the Characters and Their Real-Life Inspirations

2 Hearts begins as two romances that seem to have very little to do with each other. College freshman Chris Gregory falls for fellow student Sam, while years earlier Jorge, a man who has lived with serious lung disease since childhood, meets flight attendant Leslie. The connection between those couples eventually turns the film from a conventional romance into a story about organ donation, grief and a second chance at life.

Is 2 Hearts Based on a True Story?

Yes, 2 Hearts is based on a true story, although the movie changes names and dramatizes parts of what happened. Jacob Elordi’s Chris is based on Christopher Gregory, the 19-year-old Loyola University student whose organs saved several people after his death in 2008. Adan Canto’s Jorge is based on Jorge Bacardi, who received Christopher’s lungs in a lifesaving double-lung transplant.

Related: 2 Hearts Filming Locations

Cast Details

Jacob Elordi plays Christopher “Chris” Gregory

Jacob Elordi leads one half of the film as Chris Gregory, a college freshman whose romance with Sam gives 2 Hearts its younger love story. Elordi was already widely recognizable from The Kissing Booth and HBO’s Euphoria when the movie was released, while the official film materials identify Chris as a young man still searching for direction when he meets Sam.

Chris is also one of the characters most directly connected to reality. Christopher Mark Gregory was 19 and attending Loyola University New Orleans when he suddenly collapsed while spending time with friends in March 2008. Doctors at Tulane University Medical Center diagnosed a ruptured brain aneurysm, and his condition rapidly worsened.

Christopher had already registered as an organ donor. His family therefore honored a decision he had made for himself, allowing his organs to be recovered for transplantation after his death.

Tiera Skovbye plays Samantha “Sam” Peters

Tiera Skovbye plays Sam Peters, the college student who becomes Chris’ girlfriend. Skovbye is familiar from shows including Riverdale, Once Upon a Time and later Hallmark’s Ride, and 2 Hearts places her opposite Elordi throughout Chris’ side of the story.

Sam is loosely based on a real person rather than being an exact recreation. Eric Gregory’s book All My Tomorrows: A Story of Tragedy, Transplant and Hope, which inspired the film, refers to Christopher’s real girlfriend as Jenn. Reporting comparing the movie with the book notes that the filmmakers changed her name and developed the Sam character for the screen.

That distinction matters because some of Chris and Sam’s scenes are intentionally dramatized. The film even imagines a possible future in which Chris survives, marries Sam and builds a family before revealing that those events did not actually happen. It is a storytelling device built around the life Christopher never had the opportunity to live.

Adan Canto Plays Jorge Bacardi

Adan Canto plays Jorge Bolivar, the wealthy Cuban man whose lifelong illness eventually connects his story to Chris’. The surname is changed in the film, but the character is based on Jorge Bacardi of the Bacardi family.

The real Jorge’s medical history was extraordinary. He spent much of his life believing he had cystic fibrosis, but doctors eventually determined that he actually had primary ciliary dyskinesia, a congenital condition affecting his respiratory system. By his 60s, a double-lung transplant had become his best chance of survival.

In March 2008, Jorge received Christopher Gregory’s lungs at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. Mayo Clinic reported that the transplant gave the 63-year-old Jorge something he had essentially never experienced before: the ability to take a full breath of air.

Radha Mitchell plays the real Leslie Bacardi

Radha Mitchell plays Leslie Bolivar, Jorge’s wife and the other half of the film’s older romance. The real Leslie Bacardi was a former Pan Am flight attendant, and the official 2 Hearts production material says Jorge and Leslie shared the story of a relationship that had lasted for decades despite his severe pulmonary illness.

Leslie remained beside Jorge through the decision to pursue transplantation and his recovery afterward. The Gabriel House of Care, which the couple later helped establish, describes both Jorge and Leslie as central to the effort to honor the donor whose lungs had saved Jorge’s life.

Unlike Sam’s character, Leslie is therefore closely connected to an identifiable real person whose relationship with Jorge forms an important part of the factual story behind the movie.

Chris’ parents are also based on real people

Tahmoh Penikett and Kari Matchett play Eric and Grace, Chris’ parents. They too correspond to Christopher Gregory’s real parents, Eric and Grace Gregory.

Eric later wrote All My Tomorrows, the book from which the film drew its central story. His account describes not only losing Christopher but also learning about the recipients whose lives continued because of his son’s decision to donate his organs.

Christopher’s donations went far beyond Jorge. Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency records that Mac received his heart, Carolyn received his liver, Xavier received a kidney and another recipient, Nic, also survived because of Christopher’s donation. His corneas restored sight to two additional recipients identified as Chuck and Arlene.

How accurate is the true story in 2 Hearts?

The central transplant story is real, but 2 Hearts is not a scene-for-scene reconstruction of Christopher and Jorge’s lives.

The essential facts are firmly documented. Christopher died from a brain aneurysm at 19, his organs were donated, and Jorge received his lungs in a double-lung transplant in 2008. Jorge initially did not know his donor’s identity and referred to him as “Gabriel” in an anonymous letter to Christopher’s family.

The families eventually made contact and met in 2009. Jorge and Leslie later helped fund a hospitality facility near Mayo Clinic for transplant and radiation oncology patients and their caregivers. It was named Gabriel House of Care in Christopher’s honor and opened in 2011.

The movie reshapes that history into two parallel romances and alters certain names, timelines and personal details. Jorge becomes Jorge Bolivar, while Christopher’s real girlfriend is fictionalized as Sam Peters. Those changes make 2 Hearts a dramatization of real events rather than a documentary account.

What happened to Jorge Bacardi after the transplant?

Christopher’s donation gave Jorge another 12 years of life.

Jorge and Leslie remained closely associated with Gabriel House of Care, turning their gratitude to Christopher and his family into a project intended to help other transplant patients. Jorge died in September 2020 at the age of 76, shortly before 2 Hearts reached American theaters that October.

That real ending gives the film’s title considerably more meaning than its two central romances initially suggest. Chris and Jorge never knew each other, yet Christopher’s decision made Jorge’s additional years with Leslie possible.

The cast of 2 Hearts is therefore playing more than a collection of invented romantic characters. Behind Elordi’s Chris, Canto’s Jorge and Mitchell’s Leslie are people whose lives became connected through an event none of them could have anticipated. The film takes considerable dramatic liberties along the way, but the extraordinary transplant at the center of the story really happened.