Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Gal Gadot Worked For Pennies (Well, Kind Of) On ‘Wonder Woman’

There’s no question that it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there for millennials in the arts. Young hopefuls who want to forge careers in publishing, music, theater, or a slew of other creative pursuits find themselves barely making ends meet on their resulting paychecks.

But who knew the issue extended to Gal Gadot’s employment on the multi-million dollar “Wonder Woman” franchise?

Gal Gadot recently revealed that she was paid a mere $300,000 for her role as the lead in the film, which pulled in $100.5 million domestically on its opening weekend alone. That’s a dismal percentage of the film’s total profits that I’ll let all the engineers who make $100k year reading this out there calculate.

Although Gadot’s low earnings can’t be entirely blamed on her gender – Chris Evans was reportedly paid the same for his role in “Captain America” – she’s set to renegotiate her contract for the sequel. It’s this renegotiation that will be the real test of how much the studio values her.

For comparison, Chris Hemsworth made $5.4 million for his role in “Avengers” and Henry Cavill pulled in a cool $14 million for “Superman.”

Will Gadot see the 1,000% salary increase that the rest of us only dream of during that yearly review? Or will she fall victim to Hollywood’s predictable pattern of paying actresses far less than their male counterparts?

If Gadot’s negotiation skills are anything like her onscreen world-saving skills, you can bet she’ll be living the true American dream by this time next year.

Becky Scott is the editor of The Schmooze. Follow her on Twitter at @arr_scott

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

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.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.