The 35-year-old actress now stars as Wonder Woman in the DC Extended Universe, but has said that when she was growing up, there “weren’t many strong female characters to look up to”, and so it never occurred to her that women could “save the day”.
She said: “Obviously when I grew up, there weren’t many strong female characters to look up to. I remember being a kid and a scaredy cat. I was afraid of the dark, and whenever I thought a thief was going to come, or whatever, my dad, Superman, was going to save the day.
“It never occurred to me that my mum - who is bada** - could. And the fact that now we get to expose children, women and men to that image of a woman who celebrates femininity and is strong? Well, that’s going to have a huge impact.”
Gal believes putting strong female characters in movies and TV shows is “important”, because it will teach everyone, including men, that anyone can be a superhero.
She added: “It sounds super-condescending, I know, and I’m taking myself too seriously, but I truly feel this way - when everybody is talking about female empowerment, we can’t just focus on girls and women without educating boys and men as well. We’re all in this together. Not enemies. So the fact we’re starting to expose people to that through this character is important. Because I never thought of my mum as a superhero. Only my dad.”
The actress has two daughters of her own - Alma, nine, and Maya, three, whom she has with her husband Yaron Varsano - and hopes they will look up to her when they’re older.
However, the tots are currently too young to understand their mother’s significance as Wonder Woman.
When asked by The Sunday Times’ Culture magazine if her kids think it’s weird to have Wonder Woman as a mum, she said: “To my oldest one, most of the time, I’m not Wonder Woman. I’m the mother who asks her to do something a million times before she does it. My youngest, though, says, ‘Mummy, are you going to work?’ I say yes. And she says, ‘I’m going to go to work now too.’ And she’ll start to kick in the air. ‘I’m Wonder Woman!’ ”
