gaza war Posted Wednesday, May 7, 2025 12:00 am Hollywood is full of actresses but few are like wonder woman Gal Gadot. The pretty and athletic girl from Rosh Ha’ayin — who can identify a weapon from any distance, lift a car, close multi-million dollar real estate deals, and still be home in time for dinner with her four daughters and husband — is one of the leading and strongest stars in Hollywood. Having turned 40 on April 30, she rose from Israeli model and beauty queen to a mighty Hollywood force.
Her films to date (“Wonder Woman,” “Red Notice,” “Death on the Nile,” recently “Snow White,” and more) have grossed more than $2 billion at the box office, and she has entered the list of highest-paid actresses with $20 million per film, not to mention ancillary revenue. In Hollywood’s digital currency, that’s not just money — it’s a superpower. Especially if we take into account her latest achievement, receiving her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
No matter what critics and well-meaning souls often say about her acting skills, studios choose her for coveted roles in multi-million-dollar productions time and again, and it’s not just because of her penetrating gaze or inviting smile. Gadot is one of the few actresses who performs most of her dangerous scenes herself. “I trained like crazy for half a year before ‘Wonder Woman’,” she said in interviews.
“Fencing, capoeira, jiu-jitsu, horseback riding — every day, six hours. It was harder than the army,” she stated, which says something coming from someone who served as a fitness instructor in the IDF. But not everything was perfect in the meteoric rise.
In 2008, Gadot slipped during a Castro fashion show and created a viral moment that people still remember today. In 2010, she broke an elbow while filming a commercial also for Castro, and in 2014, a dance in another Castro commercial that many people perceived as provocative threw her into the center of a feminist storm. Her response each time was a symbol of her Israeli cool: “A commercial is meant to sell jeans, not ideology.
It should be fun and light,” she said. This approach, staying focused and matter-of-fact when everyone around is getting worked up and hoping she’ll break down and join the festivities, has become her business trademark. Her legendary 2007 photoshoot for Maxim magazine in the “Women of the Israeli Army” project still echoes in pop culture.
Her picture in a minimalist bikini changed the perception of “Israeli beauty” in the world and transformed the image of the female soldier from a threat to an object of global desire. When asked whether she regretted the sexy photo and the storm it caused, she replied with her characteristic coolness, “I’m a model, not a doctor. It’s the profession.” Film history loves the “almost.” Gadot almost became a blue, bald Nebula in the Marvel universe (a role that went to Karen Gillan) and almost became a Bond girl (the role was ultimately given to Olga Kurylenko).
But fate had something bigger in store for her when Justin Lin chose her for the role of Gisele in 2009’s “Fast & Furious 4” because of her knowledge of weapons, skills that continue to play to her advantage (literally) to this day. The “masculine” skills she brought from the Middle East made her an asset in an industry still not accustomed to women who know how to hold and operate a gun convincingly without requiring a line of stuntmen. The transition from being the face of a brand or movie to being the face of a country at war is Gadot’s real battle often, especially in recent times.
From 2021’s “Operation Guardian of the Walls” to the ongoing “Operation Iron Swords,” she finds herself at the forefront of public diplomacy as someone who is perceived, willingly or not, as Israel’s No. 1 ambassador. On one hand, huge contracts with Dior, Revlon and Gucci, on the other hand, toxic hashtags and boycotts that threaten her career.
In Israel, she’s accused of political “softness,” in Hollywood of excessive nationalism. In a world of extremes, she navigates the stormy waters of dual identity — a business maneuver that few can perform without drowning. Her 2020 “Imagine” video is a lesson in crisis management.
What started as an innocent gesture of goodwill to spread some mutual responsibility and hope became a symbol of privileged, disconnected celebrities while the world was collapsing into doom. Seth Rogen called her an [expletive] idiot on his podcast, and the internet pounced on her mercilessly, but Gadot did the almost impossible in the age of viral shaming — she absorbed, stayed silent, moved forward, and two years later even laughed at herself at the Critics’ Choice Awards. While the media is busy with her outfits on the red carpet, Gadot is quietly building a thriving business empire — a production company (Pilot Wave) she founded with her husband, Yaron Varsano, that develops content about groundbreaking women, a real estate deal that yielded $25 million when the couple sold a hotel in Tel Aviv’s Neve Tzedek neighborhood to Roman Abramovich, and a Goodles food startup that upgrades her beloved macaroni and cheese to a protein-rich version.
“I don’t want to be just a face on a poster,” Gadot said. “I want to be the power that decides which posters get printed in the first place.”
