{"id":765190,"date":"2026-09-09T16:10:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T16:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/765190\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T16:10:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T16:10:14","slug":"is-there-any-way-back-for-gal-gadot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/765190\/","title":{"rendered":"Is there any way back for Gal Gadot?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your support helps us to tell the story<\/p>\n

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.<\/p>\n

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.<\/p>\n

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.<\/p>\n

Your support makes all the difference.Read more<\/p>\n

Gal Gadot is running out of road. Since rocketing to fame as a steely Amazonian superhero in 2017\u2019s Wonder Woman, the 41-year-old Israeli actor has been unable to wrap that golden lasso of hers around a decent film role for love nor money. There were the despairing Wonder Woman followups \u2013 the cacophonously emo Justice League and gaudy scorn-magnet Wonder Woman 1984. There was the dopey Agatha Christie adaptation Death on the Nile<\/a> (Whodunnit? Whocares!). The turgid espionage thriller Red Notice<\/a>, which sandwiched Gadot between The Rock and Ryan Reynolds, all fizzing with the sort of wonderful tri-directional chemistry you\u2019d normally only get to see by asking Grok to generate its own remake of The Philadelphia Story.<\/p>\n

That was 2021, and who\u2019d have thought there was still some bottom left to this barrel? Last year brought Snow White, with Gadot slumping to new lows<\/a> as an inhumanly creaky singing witch. Now, she\u2019s hoofing it around London in The Runner, a trashy, garishly colourful piece of nonsense about a jogger blackmailed into committing a murder to save her son. Run, Gal, run!<\/p>\n

Directed by Kevin Macdonald, the once-credible Scottish filmmaker behind The Last King of Scotland and State of Play, The Runner arrived on Prime Video last week. It already seems to have come and gone: as I\u2019m writing this, it sits at 5th in the streamer\u2019s charts. Reviews were universally damning, and gleeful in their ridicule. Gadot is on characteristically brittle form as she jogs around London, smashing into pedestrians and cars and talking frantically into her earpiece. It\u2019s not quite her worst performance. Shockingly, it\u2019s not even the worst performance in the movie, being somehow outdone by Damian Lewis in preposterous puppetmaster mode. But it\u2019s yet more ammunition for her myriad detractors. The Runner\u2019s largest viewing demographic may in fact be those social media users who\u2019ve had three-second clips of Gadot\u2019s clunky line deliveries shared mockingly on their feeds.<\/p>\n

\"Un-funUn-fun run: Gal Gadot in \u2018The Runner\u2019 (Amazon MGM Studios)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to see a way back for Gadot at this point. She has become not just a bad actor, but an actor who is famously bad at acting. There is always a need for such a figure to exist in the world, to serve as a sort of universal shorthand punchline, and in 2026, it\u2019s clear that Gal Gadot is it. In previous decades, the vacancy has been filled by people like Bo Derek, or Madonna, or Jessica Alba, or Megan Fox, or Kristen Stewart. Sometimes the criticism is entirely unfair; sometimes it isn\u2019t; sometimes bad actors manage to grow into good ones.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true there\u2019s often a gendered element to the way that \u201cbad actors\u201d are often framed, with many of the consensus targets being women who are seen as sex symbols. To a lesser extent, this has always been true of men too \u2013 the vapid pretty-boy stereotype has been wielded against people like Keanu Reeves, or Zac Efron, or Robert Pattinson. (\u201cBad actor\u201d action stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Henry Cavill, Jean-Claude Van Damme or even Steven Seagal are also often judged by their bodies, albeit in a slightly different way.)<\/p>\n

It would be wrong, however, to suggest that Gadot is being written off as an actor for purely sexist reasons. A former Miss Israel pageant winner, Gadot is a glamorous figure \u2013 \u201cstatuesque\u201d was the word sometimes thrown around during her Wonder Woman breakthrough \u2013 but more often than not she eschews roles predicated on sex appeal. (The Runner, for instance, is the sort of all-action part that 30 years ago would almost certainly have been written for a man.) Dating back to her very first film role (in the fifth Fast and Furious movie), Gadot has worked primarily as an action star \u2013 a direction informed, perhaps, by her two-year conscripted stint in the IDF, the Israel military, between 2005 and 2007. In recent years, Gadot\u2019s IDF background and outspoken support of her native country has also made her something of a permissible target to some audiences, adding a political ballast to what is, at core, a purely aesthetic distaste for her awful acting.<\/p>\n

\"ChampagneChampagne problems: Gal Gadot in \u2018Death on the Nile\u2019 (20th Century Studios)<\/p>\n

Given her early success as Wonder Woman, you might wonder if the problem is usually her choice of material: even Daniel Day-Lewis would have struggled to come out of something like Snow White with his credentials untarnished. There is an element, too, of miscasting: in a way, Wonder Woman was an ideal role for Gadot, the character\u2019s status as a supernatural \u00e9migr\u00e9e offering the perfect in-universe justification for the actor\u2019s slightly flat, vaguely alien affect. But not many roles provide such a pretext. Indeed, it is hard to imagine what material would allow Gadot to flourish at this point. (The Wonder Woman door has shut: DC Studios boss James Gunn jettisoned her when he re-set the franchise in 2024, with Andor\u2019s Adria Arjona rumoured to step in.) She has never shown much evidence of range, so her options, we can only assume, are limited to projects seeking \u201ca Gal Gadot type\u201d.<\/p>\n

It may be that the only way out is through. If I were her agent, I might look at Gadot\u2019s ironic cheerleaders on social media who find camp value in her wooden performances, and see failure morph slickly into opportunity. (Her ornately unnatural delivery of lines like \u201cEnough champagne\u2026 to fill the Nile!\u201dand \u201cKAL-EL! NO!\u201d has long outlasted the memories of the actual films they were in.) In other words, her best course of action at this point may be to lean into her own weaknesses as an actor, to sign onto ever more ridiculous projects and really push her bizarre line deliveries into uncharted territory. To own her own stiltedness; to make it style. <\/p>\n

Gadot needs her Schwarzenegger-in-Batman & Robin role. Her Van-Damme-in-Street Fighter. Her Nicolas-Cage-in-The Wicker Man. Can you imagine what she\u2019d do with a helmet full of bees? Maybe, on some subconscious level, this was the idea behind The Runner \u2013 a purposeful wading into the waters of schlock wherein \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d are nebulous concepts. Maybe it\u2019s time to test just how deep those waters get.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Runner\u2019 is streaming on Prime Video<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-765190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}