Gal Gadot was born on 30 April 1985 in Petah Tikva, Israel, Rosh HaAyin, Israel, or Tel Aviv, Israel. In Hebrew, her first name means “wave” and her surname means “riverbanks”. Her parents are Irit (née Weiss), a teacher, and Michael Gadot, an engineer. Both her parents were born in Israel, and they Hebraized their surname from “Greenstein” to “Gadot” prior to her birth. Her father is a sixth-generation Sabra. Her maternal grandparents were born in Europe; her grandfather, who was imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp, survived the Holocaust, and her grandmother left before the Nazi invasion. She has stated that she was brought up in a “very Jewish, Israeli family environment”. Gadot’s family is of Ashkenazi Jewish (Polish-Jewish, Austrian-Jewish, German-Jewish, and Czech-Jewish) descent. She has a younger sister, Dana.

In 2007, 21-year-old Gadot was in the Maxim photo shoot “Women of the IDF” and was then featured on the cover of the New York Post.

After Gadot had completed her first year of college, a casting director contacted her agent to have Gadot audition for the part of Bond girl Camille Montes in the spy film Quantum of Solace. Although the part eluded her, a few months later, Gadot starred in the 2008 Israeli drama Bubot. Three months later, the casting director from her Quantum of Solace audition chose Gadot over six other actresses for the role of Gisele Yashar in the action film Fast & Furious, the fourth film in the Fast & Furious franchise. Gadot performed her own stuntwork in those films.

Gadot married Israeli real estate developer Yaron Varsano in 2008. They have two daughters, one born in 2011, and another in 2017.

In 2010, she had small roles in the action comedy Date Night and the action-adventure comedy Knight and Day. 2011 brought her back to the Fast & Furious franchise, reprising her role as Gisele in Fast Five, and in 2013’s Fast & Furious 6.

She has led international campaigns as a model for Miss Sixty, Huawei smartphones, Captain Morgan rum, Gucci fragrances and Vine Vera skincare ranges, and Jaguar Cars. In 2015, she became the face of Gucci’s Bamboo perfume brand. She has been featured as the covergirl on Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Bride Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, UMM, Cleo, Fashion, Lucire, FHM. Gadot has been the main model for fashion brand Castro in 2008–16. In 2013, her combined annual modelling and acting salary was estimated at NIS 2.4 million.

Gadot and Varsano owned a boutique hotel in Tel Aviv, which she helped to run. They sold their hotel to Roman Abramovich in 2015 for US$26 million.

Also in 2016, she had a small role in John Hillcoat’s crime-thriller Triple 9, where she starred along with Kate Winslet and Aaron Paul. Later that year, she co-starred in the action crime thriller film Criminal, as the wife of Ryan Reynolds’ character, alongside Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, and Tommy Lee Jones. Her final film of 2016 was the action comedy Keeping Up with the Joneses, in which she played a secret agent, alongside Zach Galifianakis, Jon Hamm, and Isla Fisher.

Gadot, fellow Wonder Woman actress Lynda Carter, DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson, Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins and U.N. Under-Secretary General Cristina Gallach appeared at the United Nations on 21 October 2016, the 75th anniversary of the first appearance of Wonder Woman, to mark the character’s designation by the United Nations as its “Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls”. The gesture was intended to raise awareness of UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 5, which seeks to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030. The decision was met with protests from UN staff members who stated in their petition to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that the character is “not culturally encompassing or sensitive” and served to objectify women. As a result, the character was stripped of the designation, and the project ended 16 December.

In 2017, Gadot starred in a solo film for her character, Wonder Woman. She reprised the role in the ensemble film Justice League, which was released in November 2017, and was her third DC Extended Universe instalment. That same year, Gadot was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In 2018, Gadot voiced Shank in the Walt Disney Animation Studios film Ralph Breaks the Internet.

Gadot appeared in the music video for Maroon 5’s song “Girls Like You” featuring Cardi B. In July 2018, during a break in filming Wonder Woman 1984, Gadot visited a Virginia children’s hospital in costume as Wonder Woman.

In October 2019, Gadot formed a production company, Pilot Wave, with her husband, Jaron Varsano, and said she will star in and co-produce an Apple TV+ limited series about actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr, as well as the Warner Bros. historical thriller film Irena Sendler, about humanitarian Irena Sendler.

Gadot will star alongside Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds in the upcoming Netflix thriller film Red Notice, written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. On 11 October 2020, Gadot was confirmed to be reuniting with Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins on Cleopatra, an epic film centered on Cleopatra produced by Paramount Pictures.

Gadot was named as celebrity endorser for Smartwater in 2020, replacing Jennifer Aniston who had served in that role since 2008. In March 2020, Gadot and a number of other celebrities performed an online version of the song “Imagine” by John Lennon, intended to raise morale in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the video was poorly received by audiences, many of whom criticised it for being an ineffectual response to the pandemic.