Gal Gadot: Beauty, strength and brains make her Israel's best ambassador
#24: Gal Gadot
By HANNAH BROWNGal Gadot(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
There is no royalty in Israel, but if there were, Gal Gadot would be our queen.Gadot, who combines beauty, strength and brains with that ineffable something extra that has made her a worldwide sensation, is the ultimate ambassador for Israeli and Jewish pride.While Gadot didn’t have a new movie out this year, her presence loomed large in the entertainment world and the social media landscape, proving she is more than just another superhero actress.READ NO. 23: DAME LOUISE ELLMAN>>READ NO. 25: PRESIDENT REUVEN RIVLIN>>Read the full list of The World's Most Influential Jews>>With more than 30 million followers on Instagram, Gadot is more than an influencer. Even the men’s magazine Maxim, which tends to focus more on women’s measurements than their minds, noticed that Gadot has become far more than another pretty face, as it wrote in its description of her on its Hot 100 feature that she was “the only woman on this list who can field strip an M16.”Gadot is still an actress, of course, best known for playing Wonder Woman, who will reprise that role in the new Cold War-set installment in the series, Wonder Woman 1984, which is currently in post-production and is slated to be released in 2020. This time around, Gadot earned $10 million for the role, a big improvement over the $300,000 (plus bonuses) she made for the original Wonder Woman.She has proved herself on screen but she is much more than just a comic book heroine. In addition to the Wonder Woman sequel, she will be hitting both the big and small screens in three other projects in 2020. In the movie, Death in the Nile, Kenneth Branagh’s latest Agatha Christie adaptation, she will play a wealthy heiress. Red Notice, the biggest budget film in the history of Netflix, will star Gadot opposite Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds in an international heist story.She could certainly make a fulltime career out of doing action movies, with her martial arts training honed in the IDF, and her natural air of authority. But she’s broadening her horizons and has signed to star as Hedy Lamarr, the sultry Jewish European actress who conquered Hollywood – much as Gadot has done – and who also invented a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes during World War II and pioneering frequency technology that is in use today in modern Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices. Not only is Gadot starring in this Showtime series, she is also executive producing it.This is a dizzying list of projects, but in the midst of it all, the Rosh Ha’ayin native found time to come home to Israel for the summer with her husband, businessman Yaron Varsano, and their two daughters. She was seen taking her girls to the beach with one of her girlfriends and her child, like any other Israeli mom during summer vacation.Gadot’s success glitters more brightly because, in spite of her looks, money and poise, she is always one of us. When we celebrate her, we are celebrating Israel, a fact she understands and embraces.
