It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Gal Gadot wielding the Lasso of Truth, but she was close to giving up on acting before landing the role of Wonder Woman.
In a Sunday Today interview with Willie Geist, the 32-year-old admitted that she considered going back to law school to support her family rather than deal with more rejection in Hollywood.
When asked how close she actually came to quitting, Gadot replied, “I was as close as it gets.”
“There’s so much ‘no,’ ” she explained of auditioning in Los Angeles after working on a few Fast and the Furious films. “There’s so much rejection in this world that I thought, ‘Maybe it’s not for me. …Maybe I should go back to law school instead of dragging my family with me.’ ”
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Gadot also shared that acting fell into her lap after she competed in pageants — she won the title of Miss Israel in 2004 and went to compete with Miss Universe.
“I never thought about becoming an actress and the opportunity kind of came my way,” she shared. “I started to become more curious about it, and then I fell in love with the profession — but it wasn’t like I was growing up dreaming of becoming an actress.”
“Then everything changed again,” the mother of two said with a smile of being cast as the iconic superhero.
Gadot recently addressed rumors that she had refused to play Wonder Woman again if Brett Ratner was involved in the sequel in the wake of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against the producer.
The actress — who reprises the character in Justice League — stopped by Today Wednesday where she spoke out for the first time about reports first published by Page Six.
“At the end of the day, a lot has been written about my views and the way that I feel, and everyone knows the way that I feel because I’m not hiding anything,” she told Savannah Guthrie. “But the truth is, there’s so many people making this movie — it’s not just me — and they all echoed the same sentiments.”
“Everyone knew what the right thing to do,” Gadot added. “But there was nothing for me to actually come and say because [the decision] was already done before this article came out.”
Wonder Woman 2 hits theaters Nov. 1, 2019.