GAL GADOT ON HER NEW SUPERHERO MOVIE
I love playing a powerful role model for my daughters & my husband loves that his wife is Wonder Woman
It’s nice to look at the movie and know Maya is there with me GAL GADOT ON FILMING WHILE EXPECTING BABY
Gal Gadot really can do it all as Wonder Woman. She rides horses, wields a whopping sword and saves the world – and her man – while wearing a literally breathtaking outfit.
But what makes her performance truly superhuman is that Gal actually filmed some of those scenes while pregnant, so her newborn daughter Maya also got to star. And for a film oozing girl power, this is particularly apt.
Gal, 32, who also has daughter Alma, five, says: “I was pregnant and showing for some of the additional scenes we shot but they did some clever stuff with special effects to hide my bump.
“It didn’t hinder the process, I could still do the action stuff and the physical scenes. And now, it’s nice to look at the movie and know that Maya is in the movie with me in some way. I love that.
“She has an entry on movie database IMDB. It took me years to get mine.”
The Israeli actress is now on her way to being a household name after the movie opened on Friday – and her CV reads like that of a real wonder woman.
She has served in the military, competed in Miss Universe and rides a motorbike. She also juggled her intense training with caring for Alma on set. Some men might find that intimidating, but not Gal’s husband of eight years, property developer Yaron Versano, 38.
“He’s super-happy to be married to Wonder Woman,” she laughs. “He’s my biggest fan. The only thing that changed is he has started training more because I became so strong!”
Gal first slipped on Wonder Woman’s Bracelets of Submission in last year’s Batman v Superman. But her standalone movie is now smashing a fair few glass ceilings.
With Monster’s Patty Jenkins at the helm, it’s the first superhero movie this millennium directed by a woman and the biggest opening weekend box office taking for a female director ever. So far it has raked in £172million.
And Gal will soon reprise the role again for Justice League. It is out in November and reunites her with Ben Affleck’s Batman and Henry Cavill as Superman.
The star, who was born and raised in Rosh HaAyin, Israel, is proud to be a female superhero that her daughters and girls everywhere can look up to.
Gal says: “I feel I was born to play Wonder Woman. Boys have always had a figure to look up to, whether it’s Superman, Batman or Spider-Man.
“For girls it was always the princess being saved.
“Now we have Wonder Woman – she’s fearless, proactive, she believes in herself and she believes she can do everything. That’s a true woman for me.”
It could all have been so different if Gal landed the first
role she auditioned for – as a Bond girl opposite Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace. Bond girls may be iconic, but few are strong female role models.
Born to teacher Irit and engineer Michael, Gal became a school basketball star after shooting up to 5ft 10in.
As is normal in Israel, she was called for military service, aged 20, and spent two years as a combat trainer.
She then went on to study for a degree in law and international relations, but having done beauty pageants on the side, she was snapped by a modelling agency and spotted by a British casting director who asked her to try out for Bond.
Gal says: “That was my very first audition, I wasn’t even an actress. But everything happens for a reason.
“Going through the entire process only for it not to work out, made me realise that I wanted to be an actress.”
Her big break then came as she moved to the US and landed a recurring role as sharp-shooting Gisele Yasharin in the Fast and Furious series. But it will be playing Wonder Woman, alias Diana Prince, that will make her a star. And while her military history helped her get in shape for playing the Amazonian demigoddess, it was not easy.
She spent months eating pasta and salmon to fuel a gruelling training regime to gain 17lb of muscle.
The actress says: “I couldn’t even do one pull-up when I started.
“I had a tent in the studio and every time we had a break I went training,
We shot in England in mid-winter, it was so cold I could barely talk GAL GADOT ON DEALING WITH BRITISH WEATHER
so I was training all the time.” She also had to adapt to the glamorous but skin-tight costumes.
Gal says: “I love the costume, I think it’s super-strong and sexy at the same time. But the first time in the costume it was so tight I could not breathe.
“They made things better this time. It was pretty comfortable, apart from the cold. We shot in England in the middle of winter, wearing not much. It was so cold I could hardly talk.”
Gal wasn’t even born when Lynda Carter, now 65, first played Wonder Woman in the hugely popular 1970s television series.
But this made her less nervous when she met her in New York last October to celebrate Wonder Woman being made a United Nations Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls. It was an instant friendship. Gal laughs: “From the very first moment I met her I totally understood why she was the first Wonder Woman.
“She has such a special energy and presence. She’s funny, and smart, and witty, and sassy, and she’s amazing.”