Miss Israel’s ‘Fast & Furious’ Debut
Breakthrough: Gal Gadot will co-star in the forthcoming ?Fast & Furious? movie. Image by COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES
A former Miss Israel is ready to make her big-budget Hollywood debut.
Breakthrough: Gal Gadot will co-star in the forthcoming ?Fast & Furious? movie. Image by COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES
Gal Gadot, the 2004 winner of Israel’s top beauty pageant, will appear on film screens around the world next month in the fourth installment of “Fast & Furious,” one of the decade’s highest-grossing action series. In the new film, which opens in the United States on April 3, the Rosh Ha’ayin native plays Gisele Harabo, the latest romantic interest of Vin Diesel’s explosion-loving, speed-junkie protagonist. The role should launch the beauty queen to a new level of international visibility: Although the “Fast” franchise has cooled somewhat, the series’s first three installments have averaged more than $200 million each at the worldwide box office.
Regardless of the new film’s success, Gadot is not unknown to Americans. After winning the Miss Israel title, she went on to represent the Jewish state in the Miss Universe beauty pageant. In the summer of 2007, she was widely interviewed after Maxim magazine featured her in a headline-generating photo spread devoted to bikini-clad Israeli soldiers. A major attention-getter in the United States — the New York Post put a photo of Gadot on its cover, above the headline “Piece in the Middle East” — the images proved more controversial in Israel, where then-deputy Knesset speaker Colette Avital criticized the spread as “pornographic.”
Since completing her military service, the 23-year-old Gadot has starred in an Israeli TV drama and served as the female face of Castro, the country’s largest clothing company. She’s also set to guest star in an upcoming episode of HBO’s “Entourage.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
