Profile: Gal Gadot
She’s a Wonder Woman in every screen role
With her long lean frame, dark hair and dark eyes, Israeli model Gal Gadot—the face of Gucci Bamboo fragrance—is poised to become a major movie star, as the titular lead of Wonder Woman, a mega-budget franchise based on the famous DC comic-book superhero. And at 31, the married mother of a 5-year-old girl, she’s more than ready. Born and raised in the Israeli town of Rosh Ha’Ayin, Gadot (pronounced guh-DOTE) became Miss Israel at 18 and went on to compete in the 2004 Miss Universe pageant. From there she went into the Israeli army for her mandatory military service. “You give two or three years, and it’s not about you,” Gadot told Glamour. “You give your freedom away. And you learn discipline and respect.”
Being Miss Israel led to modeling work, and after trying out for a Bond girl role, she ended up cast as Gisele Yashar in Fast & Furious, the fourth installment of the Vin Diesel–Paul Walker crime-and-car-racing franchise. Gisele, who was revealed to be a former Mossad agent, stayed on through two more F&F films and was killed off (though she appeared in flashbacks in Fast & Furious 7)—watch her best scene in Fast Five in the clip at top. This fall, Gadot will appear in Keeping Up With the Joneses as the wife of Jon Hamm, the two of them spies living undercover in suburbia next door to Isla Fisher and Zach Galifianakis (the movie opens in theaters on October 21). “This is the first major comedy role that I’ve done,” Gadot told Interview. “But it’s going great.”
Last spring, Gadot’s Wonder Woman (civilian name: Diana Prince) was introduced in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and by some accounts she stole the show, especially when the full array of superheroes in the Justice League lets loose at the end. Her solo outing, Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, is due out June 2, 2017, followed by Justice League on November 17 of that year. Gadot recently discussed with Entertainment Weekly what it was like to work on the first superhero film that has ever been directed by a woman. “I’m lucky in that I’ve worked with men who have a lot of respect for women,” she said. “But working with a woman is a different experience. It feels like the communication is different. We talk about emotions. With Patty, it’s a thing now, we communicate with our eyes. She doesn’t need to say a thing. If I’m hurt, she feels the pain. It’s a whole different connection that I have with her. She’s also brilliant, she’s bright, she’s fierce, she’s sharp. She knows exactly what she wants Wonder Woman to be. For a long time, people didn’t know how to approach the story. When Patty and I had our creative conversations about the character, we realized that Diana can still be a normal woman, one with very high values, but still a woman. She can be sensitive. She is smart and independent and emotional. She can be confused. She can lose her confidence. She can have confidence. She is everything. She has a human heart.”
