Israeli actress Gal Gadot has been in the industry for quite a while now, but she hadn’t really become a household name. Sure, she was getting regular roles playing spies and similar characters, and even got a starring role opposite Isla Fisher in the action comedy Keeping Up With The Joneses, but she just wasn’t quite an A-Lister yet. She wasn’t the type of actress that magazines were clamouring to interview and photograph. And then, Wonder Woman happened.

Casting for a superhero movie is always a big deal, because not only are they nearly always huge budget films with big expectations, they’re also often multi-film characters. Audiences love them, so studios keep bringing the characters back — after all, when you’re doing films based on comic books with decades and decades of issues in the archives, you basically have unlimited inspiration and storylines.

Still, it’s not an easy decision — so when it came time to cast the incredible Amazonian superstar, Wonder Woman, casting directors searched far and wide for the perfect person to play the role. And, they ended up landing on Gal Gadot — she may not have been as A-List as some of the other actresses trying out, but she had a little something special about her. It was obviously a good call, because people love her in the film.