Gal Gadot is nothing if not grateful
(eonline) After celebrating her 35th birthday at the onset of a global pandemic this time last year, the superstar heads into celebrations for her 36th on April 30 with a bit more to look forward to. Her highly-anticipated film Wonder Woman 1984 finally arrived at the tail end of 2020, becoming the most-streamed film of the year in the process, and this coming fall, she’s joining forces with Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds for Red Notice, rumored to be Netflix’s most expensive film in history.
And that’s not to mention her continued good health, as well as that of her growing family, amid a truly turbulent year.
“I am lucky,” Gadot told Vanity Fair in October. “I say thank you every morning. In the Jewish culture there’s a prayer that you’re supposed to say every time you wake up in the morning to thank God for, you know, keeping you alive and dadadada.
“You say ‘modeh ani,’ which means ‘I give thanks,’ “she explained. “So every morning I wake up and step out of bed and I say, ‘Thank you for everything, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.’ Nothing is to be taken for granted.”
In honor of Gadot’s big day, take a look at some of the most fascinating facts from a wonderful life well-lived.
1. Gal Gadot was born on April 30, 1985 in Petah Tikva, Israel and raised in the neighboring city of Rosh HaAyin. “I was brought up in a very lovely, naïve neighborhood,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2016. “We didn’t have cell phones. You would go in the afternoon to see friends, you’d just walk to their house and knock on the door and ask for a play date. We were all very active as kids.
2. In Hebrew, her first name means “wave” and her last name means “riverbanks.”
3. Mom Irit was a teacher and dad Michael an engineer. And it was mom’s job that influenced Gal’s early life. “My mother was a P.E. teacher so I grew up playing volleyball, tennis, basketball...I was a high jumper,” she told the Australian outlet. “I was very, very active.”
4. While both parents were born in Israel, Irit was a first-generation Jewish Israeli. (Michael was sixth-generation.) Her maternal grandmother managed to get out of Europe before the Nazi invasion, but her grandfather wasn’t as lucky. They were still in Czechoslovakia when the Nazis arrived. His father died in the army, while he, his mother and brother were sent to Auschwitz. He was the only one to survive. “His entire family was murdered—it’s unthinkable,” she told Rolling Stone in 2017. “He affected me a lot. After all the horrors he’d seen, he was like this damaged bird, but he was always hopeful and positive and full of love.
5. She has one younger sister, Dana, whom she described as a “ray of sun” on Facebook in 2016.
6. Though she received modeling offers while in high school, she opted to work at the local Burger King instead. “I was like, ‘Posing for money? Ugh, it’s not for
me,’” she told RS.
7. After graduating high school, and before her compulsory service in the Israeli armed forces, her mom talked her into competing in the 2004 Miss Israel pageant. “I got in and I never thought I would win and then I won and then it scared me,” she told W Magazine in 2017. “I was like, ‘What? Miss Israel? All the responsibility of being Miss Israel?’”
8. Winning meant she had to compete in that year’s Miss Universe pageant in Ecuador, which she had no desire to take seriously. “I was afraid I might get picked again,” she told Glamour in 2016. “I showed up late. I came without gowns. They tell you to come to breakfast in a gown. I was like, ‘No way am I having breakfast in a gown!’ Who needs to wear an evening gown at 10:30 A.M.?” She finished outside the Top 20.
“I lost majorly,” she happily told Rolling Stone. “I victoriously lost.”
9. At 20, she began serving her two mandatory years in the Israel Defense Services. “I was a combat instructor,” she explained to the Sydney Morning Herald. “I was never on the field doing anything dangerous or with weapons. I was in the gym training soldiers and keeping them in shape. I did that for two years. I did learn to use a weapon in boot camp. But I was never in a situation where I had to use one.”
10. While serving, she met Yaron Varsano, a real estate developer 10 years her senior, “in the desert at this chakra/yoga retreat type of party,” she told Vogue in 2020. “And he was too cool for school. Like, we were in the same group of friends, but I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. And something happened kind of from the first moment we started talking. When we got home, I was like, ‘Is this too early to call you? I want to have a date.’ Then we go out, and by the second date he told me, ‘I’m going to marry you. I’m going to wait for two years, but we’re going to get married.’ I was like, ‘Fine.’” True to his word, they tied the knot in 2008.
11. In 2007, she appeared in a Maxim spread entitled “Women of the IDF” that generated modeling and acting offers. A year later, she began a lengthy stint as the main model for Israeli clothing brand Castro.
12. Despite the lucrative offers beginning to roll in, she decided to enroll at the IDC Herzliya college, where she studied law and international relations “because I’m so deep, and I loved Ally McBeal,” she told Rolling Stone.
13. After completing her first year at university, a casting director asked her to audition for the role of Bond girl Camille Montes in Quantum of Solace. “I told my agent, ‘What are you talking about? I’m in school. I’m not an actress. I’m not gonna go,’” she told RS. “And he was like, ‘Just show respect and go.’” She lost the role to Olga Kurylenko.
14. While she didn’t become a Bond girl, she did make her acting debut in 2007, starring in the short-lived Israeli series Bubot, though her big break was just around the corner.
15. Just months after losing out on the Bond role, the same casting director who asked her to audition brought her in for the role of Gisele in Fast & Furious, the fourth installment in the franchise. This time, she got the gig. “I think the main reason [I was cast] was that the director Justin Lin really liked that I was in the military, and he wanted to use my knowledge of weapons,” she’s said of winning the role.
16. Appearing in four Fast and Furious films in total, Gal’s performed nearly all her own stunt work in the action-heavy franchise.
17. In the same year she made her big screen debut, she also appeared in an episode of Entourage as well as a few of the short-lived CW drama The Beautiful Life: TBL.
18. The offers soon came rolling in and she began sharing the screen with Tom Cruise (Knight & Day), Tina Fey and Steve Carrell (Date Night).
19. Despite the increased profile, she and her husband still found time to open a hotel together in Tel Aviv called The Varsano. “We found ourselves staying in hotels all the time. We wanted to feel at home, which is when we discovered these apartments within a hotel in Los Angeles,” she told TotallyJewish.com in 2011. “It became the inspiration for Yaron’s hotel, The Varsano. I think that Yaron and I make a really good team. I understand his career and he understands mine. We help each other progress in all areas of life. We’re both very career driven.” She was so involved in helping run the business, she even claimed she changed the sheets herself when in town.
20. In 2015, the couple sold the hotel to IsraeliRussian billionaire Roman Abramovich for a cool $26 million.