Gili Itzkovich in the reserves/Gili Itzkovich's Instagram
No Israeli will ever forget where he was on the morning of October 7, 2023. It's a cliché, but it's true. In those moments, when our country changed its face probably forever, the actress Gili Itzkovich Asor was in the clouds. Literally. Five minutes before midnight she took off for Los Angeles, with the aim of fulfilling her biggest dream: to become an international actress. For two years, she feverishly studied English and worked on her accent every day, until she found the confidence to go out and fulfill her dream of working in the US. She traveled for a month, with the aim of studying with two of the biggest masters in Hollywood for training actors, and trying to find local representation. She was completely cut off from time. That Israel was attacked. Without access to the Internet, without a clue about the massacre that was taking place in the city,
Itzkovic continued to be cut off from the news in Israel She did not have access to the three "hooks" - Walla, Wint, WhatsApp. At some point she talked to her husband, Assaf Asor, who told her that "something is happening in Israel" but hid the dimensions of the incident from her in order to let her settle in the city before the reality hit her. Finally, as she had planned, she went into a local cell phone store. The Jewish seller asked her where she was from, and she proudly told her: The seller wanted to comfort her and wish her family well, but she had no idea what he was talking about who had time to install the sim she had already heard by heart all the horrors that were known to us on that damned day.
"I find myself in a phone store with an American Jewish salesman, and we are both crying our lives out in the middle of the store. It was terrible," says Itzkovich in an interview with Walla Tarbut. "I asked myself how I get on a flight and return to Israel, and the truth is that I was simply exhausted after all the flights and connections. I decided that I would return to Israel the next day. And Asaf, my husband, told me, 'Please don't come back. I know you, you will enlist in the reserves tomorrow if you return to Israel. You're one less worry when you're there. You flew to fulfill a dream, you've worked so long for this thing, be there and I'll stay."
You were actually in Los Angeles for the first five weeks of the war. How did it feel to see what happened here from the outside?
"Shocking. Very great feelings of guilt. My good friends were mobilized to fight in Gaza and I was in daily contact with them to understand what was happening. Every morning when you get up you start in Vala, Vint and Mako and in Lakrou and understand what is happening in the country and understand and feel very guilty that you are there. I made a cold decision and reminded myself that I came to have fun. I came to work. Every attraction I was planning to do, everything I was looking to do that was fun - totally wasted. It didn't get rid of the guilt. You want to be in Israel. With the people and with the army, and you want to enter Gaza with a ceramic vest and weapons."
Immediately upon her return to Israel, Itzkovich enlisted in the reserves in the Technology and Maintenance Corps (formerly the Armed Forces Corps), where she also served as a regular officer. This time she was recruited for a new position whose purpose is to "show the importance of the corps in the war." She did this role for four months. Her private Instagram page also began to be filled with videos that explain the simple truth: without the armed forces, the IDF cannot fight.
"People in the BCOM refuse to come to the army because they don't understand the importance," says Itzkovich, "they don't understand that without us the war doesn't progress. For example, a tank. Take a specific tool that is now damaged in the field - it is one less tool that our fighters have. Every time we repair and return it to the field, we multiply power. We returned a tank four times? It's like four tanks. And this is true for every tool that exists. It is impossible to move without this force"
"So I enlisted to do something that is between spokespeople and public relations, digital and strategy. That's what I did for four months from morning to night, and the reason I was let go is because I explained that this was my and my husband's only chance to fly for our honeymoon. We got married a year and a half ago, but due to all kinds of circumstances it still hasn't happened and I dream of flying to Thailand. They told me, 'Fly, come back, and we'll recruit you again.'" Indeed, right during the interview, which was held the day after she returned to Israel from Thailand, she received a call from her commander, who asked her to return for another round.
My initial meeting with Gili Itzkovich Asor felt like it was taken from a Disney movie. The gloomy sky suddenly brightened when the vegan actress entered the "Michelangelo" cafe. The rain that soaked the alleys of Jaffa has stopped. Birds started chirping. A dog that was sitting outside decided to come and lay its head on her feet without an invitation. She was not moved by it, as if it was a matter of routine for her. I introduce myself and her eyes beam, as if we've known each other for years. She breaks the ice, even though it melts anyway from her smile. This is not a good place to start an interview. The interviewer should not be fascinated by his interviewee. I remind myself that she is an actress, and even a good one, so I shouldn't be moved by the kindness she chooses to convey. She may be on duty now. On the other hand, I trust the intuition of the dog, who by now has already fallen asleep at her feet.
On screen she played larger than life characters. If it's Kirki who has supernatural powers in "Kadbra", my darling Mordechai in "Motok Ball in the Middle" who turns from a reality star to a member of the Knesset or the iconic Ilana Berkovic in "The Moon Years". In reality, Itzkovich insists on maintaining a facade of normalcy. No diva papers, no posing. In her new movie "Air Combat" she plays Galia, a member of the Kambatz in the squadron that leads the Moked operation that started the Six Day War, in which she looks the most similar to her real persona, certainly after she was released from 120 days of active reserve in the war.
I hear about Miri Regev's film "Aerial Battle" has been making the rounds with populist headlines even before they shot a single frame of it. I thought it was going to be very warlike and patriotic at the end. Love in the Sky" The Six Day Version.
"It is true that the war itself is negligible in the film, but there are a lot of air battles. There are a lot of photos in the air. And that's what's crazy, by the way, because there is no budget in Israel to make so many moments that require so many effects."
The celebratory premiere of the war film took place on April 7, the day we marked six months since the most horrific attack on Israel. Was it felt at the screening?
"Very. Everyone approaches and automatically asks: 'How are you? How are you?', because that's the trivial question they usually ask. And I found myself answering everyone that it's very strange and complicated to be here on this date. Every 7th of every month is a date that has been strange and difficult ever since When I saw the invitation to the screening, I thought: 'It's always hard for people to be happy. It's just something that accompanies us all the time.' Mine is that I know people are fighting now in Gaza so that this country can exist, so that such events can happen. And the only thing I expect is that this film will somehow raise morale. People will see it and say to themselves: Oh, we have a strong army." . More precisely
,
they will see that we had a strong army, the movie is after all about 1967, when the IDF knew how to subdue three enemy countries in three days. On October 7, this faith in the army took a hit.
will make people believe again in the security of our country. We have a strong army. We have very good people there. I don't know how to talk about the leadership and what is on top. In the end, when we talk about a 'strong army' we are talking about who makes the decisions from above, and whether he makes the right decisions. I don't know about that, I know about the people. Those who are at the end on the battlefield, and those who support them and are on the home front - these are people who want to protect the country and do everything they can so that we can live. I trust them, the individual within the army."
There are many different approaches when it comes to gaming in general, and gaming in front of a camera in particular. Particularly well-known is the methodical acting method (also known simply as "the method"), developed by Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler, which itself is a refinement of the "Stanislavsky method" developed at the beginning of the last century in the Russian theater. The 21st century introduced a more modern refinement to the traditional methods, with the release of the book "The Power of the Actor" by acting teacher Ivana Chebek. The book, which introduced the "Chebek method for acting" became a bestseller, and the bible of quite a few actors such as Brad Pitt, Charlize Theron, Jim Carrey, Garry Shandling and more. After she won the Oscar for her role in the movie "Monster Ball ", Halle Berry dedicated the win to Chebek, whom she defined as her mentor. In October 2023, 29-year-old Gili Itzkovic Asor entered this distinguished list of students (which also includes Beyoncé!).
It would be impossible to briefly summarize the method or the book (which, by the way, was translated into Hebrew with an afterword by the late Ronit Alkebats), but it can be said that among other things the method tries to create a connection between the actor's or actress's personal feelings and the characters. This is especially interesting in the case of Itzkovich, who diagnosed herself as HSP ("A very sensitive person"). She was born with a high sensitivity in sensory processing, to the extent that it's hard for her to even wear jeans ("It's a fabric that I don't like because I feel it"), she made it clear at the beginning of her romantic relationship with her future husband He has nothing to be excited about her crying. "It's our secret. He's not excited about me," she explains.
What do you mean, you cry and he won't do anything?
"No. The first day we met and he saw me crying I told him 'act as if everything is normal'. I feel that my threshold is very low, and basically everything touches it very quickly, but it dissipates and I return back to normal. I'm not a depressed person, I'm a sensitive person, so I can feel something very quickly, very strongly, and then a few minutes will pass and it will pass, like a wave. If you give it a lot of weight, then it just weighs it down."
Is it an advantage for the actress? Because I haven't seen you cry much on screen.
"It's very hard for me to cry 'On Kyu'. Very. I can't force my brain. My brain is so smart. From the moment I try to force cry, it shuts it down. It's very interesting. My brain just tells me: 'Why are you I'm not going to cry now. When there's an audition where I need to cry, I'll make it happen on set, but I will I never manage to do it in an audition and it sucks me terribly."
Also during the interview several such moments were recounted, with the climax coming when the subject of the abductees in Gaza came up in our conversation organically. "I don't know a single abductee personally," says Itzkovich, her eyes filling with tears, "and I feel that this is what hurts so much in our country. Everyone feels they know each other, everyone feels they are there."
Precisely because I empathize with you, I am trying to understand together with you why our sensitivity is specifically towards the abductees and not, for example, the IDF martyrs?
"Because they live there." Because they are alive. Because they are alive and they are there. The martyrs of the IDF is a very painful thing, but you know that you arrive at a mission, and sometimes it will cost you your life. I know women who lost their husbands in this war. Young women my age with small children, and it breaks my heart. But I tell myself: she Here with her child, with the family that surrounds her, with the future in front of her - and it hurts and breaks my heart and I don't know what I would do tomorrow morning if I were her - but she has a future and when I look at the abductees I realize that they don't have a future if our stupid country doesn't deliver them from there. They have no future. The fact that I'm here with you and they're there - crushes me."
In the movie "Air Combat" Itzkovich plays Galia, an operational officer who, although she performs an important function during the war, but the "good for flying" men around her still treat her with disdain as a woman, including an ugly comment from the base asking her to make him coffee. In real life she served As an armaments officer in the 532nd Armored Battalion, and even though decades have passed since the time in which the film takes place, she often felt the same chauvinism on her body
. It's a men's army. When you come to a place dominated by men and a woman has to prove herself as someone who can do what men can do. This powerful possession that really doesn't care if it gets dirty or not and wants to get the car stuck in the deep mud. By the way, I was 15 kilos heavier than today, that's the truth."
Where did this ideal of the strong woman who can do everything men do, that is from home, come from?
"My mother is a very strong woman. She was an officer in the army, and when she was released she entered the prison service and she advanced in the Shavas and did a lot of roles that women did for the first time. She was the first head of the wing in Israel, and she was the head of Ofek prison when I was a girl. She was a very scary woman to me when I was young. And today, after she retired, my mother is a natural pharmacist."
Well, I'll give from Pardes Hana anyway.
"Exactly. But thanks to her it was important for me to be a strong woman. I will say that I did not feel in the service that I was trusted blindly. They would have preferred to send a man in my place, and that every time I had to prove myself that I could do the job. And there were comments. Comments on weight, comments on visibility, comments on dirt. No one would tell men if they were dirty, but women would. 'Why don't you change into cleaner uniforms?' So it is indeed something that is not close to what happened in the Six Day War, but it is something that is still being fought to this day."
The truth is that the film is also quite sterile, the female soldier is called 'Midla', but there is no sexual harassment, for example.
"They went down in the editing!"
Really? What Was there?
"There is a scene where I go into Maor Schweitzer's office [who plays the squadron commander in the movie - AS], and show him a book, and when I come out he looks at my ass and throws a comment at me, and then I get angry and leave."
Even in the movie you get angry and leave in this scene, just without a comment about the ass.
"True. But all kinds of moments like that that are more disturbing in the end will be cut in the edit."
Continuing the conversation about the film, Itzkovich herself diagnoses that the film does something that is almost never done in today's cinema and television, and that is to place a cast consisting only of good-looking actors. It's not only the casting of the main actors - Maor Schweitzer, Daniel Litman, Lehi Koronovsky and Itzkovich herself - but also the fact that they all look great even when they wake up in the middle of the night to go to war, the women are always modeled with a beret on their heads, and there is also time for sexual tension between each The missions, the battles and the casualties. From this conversation a surprising truth emerges for Itzkovich when she says: "When I look at Daniel Litman in the movie I say 'Wow, he is extremely handsome' but when I look at myself I don't see myself that way. Not at all."
Don't you see yourself as a beautiful woman?
"I don't see myself as a particularly beautiful woman. No. Unequivocally no. Everyone has their own personality, and it feels to me like something weakening to say as someone who really tries to strengthen and empower women - but I was now with my husband in Thailand, and he took a picture of me in our pool A few pictures and I said to him: 'I can't believe I have so much cellulite'. It's not that I'm fat, it's not that there's anything wrong with it. But I have complex genes."
I really didn't mean for us to talk about your appearance in the interview, but if you've already brought it up, then I think it's actually the other way around. For example, at the time I wrote a very positive review of "Baby Ball in the Middle", and specifically about your acting, but I admit that in the first episodes I thought you were not suitable for the main role. I thought they should have brought in another actress, I don't know who...
"someone less beautiful".
You know? You may be very smart, you may be an atomic scientist, but when they look at you for the first time on the screen, they first see a beautiful woman. Do you feel it prevented you from roles?
"Definitely. I know. There are certain auditions that my agent tells me: 'You can audition, but they really told me they're looking for normal-looking people.' It sucks. I have a lot of girlfriends who get auditions and it says in the title 'a normal looking woman, can look like the woman who passes in front of me at any given moment.' More and they say to themselves: people won't believe it. People can't accept that a beautiful person will have difficulties in life."
Do you think it also damages the professional evaluation of you? That people think the roles you got are because they were looking for a beautiful woman and that's why you got them?
"I think that every person who defines him as a beautiful person, everything he achieves in life will say that it was easier for him to achieve them because of the way he looks."
And do you feel this is true for you?
"I don't know if it really opened very certain doors for me, because it's not like I advanced to roles that require a certain look. Sometimes you need a model to play the role of a model, and that's not the case with my roles."
I will ask another way, if you were a "regular looking woman" as it is defined in the industry would you perhaps be more valued? Are you getting more roles? Winner of the most awards?
"I don't know how to answer this question and maybe that's why I avoid it time after time."
I'm not just insisting on it. In my personal opinion, Brad Pitt is one of the best actors in Hollywood of the last 30 years, but when people talk about Brad Pitt they immediately think of a handsome man, not an acclaimed actor with an insanely wide range who has done amazing roles. Is this a Hollywood disease or do you feel it also exists in Israel?
"I think that if someone is perceived as particularly beautiful, then they are less appreciated for any of their other abilities. I am not talking about myself at any point in this context, because I do not think that I have done anything in my career, at any point along the way, that is because of beauty. I do not think that there is Some kind of role they took me because I'm beautiful. I think it was always 'despite'. If they're looking for someone who's supposed to be particularly beautiful, I don't think they'll choose Yael or Omar Nodelman Something about their personality that projects 'how beautiful I am'. I don't think I'm ugly and everything, but I can never model."
Why not?
"Because I don't have the body for it. If you're a model you have to be thin and beautiful and tall. But I'm not thin enough to be a model and I don't have the right body shape either. As soon as they want to have someone who has to do half of her scenes on a column or half of her scenes In a bikini, I won't be chosen, and I know that."
Unless they are looking for the normal person on a pole or in a bikini.
"But then I collide. Because I'm normal in my body and they claim that I'm beautiful inside. I'm not normal enough, and not beautiful enough because I'm not shapely and thin enough. I'm in some kind of conflict adjusting to the roles."
Okay, so you don't know you're beautiful - but at least you know you're funny? I saw you in several sketches with Lior Schlein in "Relevant" and I was surprised by how gracefully and naturally his rather aggressive satire comes out of you. Is humor an area that appeals to you?
"Very! It started when I would manage to make Shmuel the book laugh in the scenes of 'Motok Bull in the Middle'. That's when I realized that although I don't have a musical understanding, I do have a comedic understanding. I know what's funny, and where the funny is, and I also think I know how to touch it delicately and does not press."
On the other hand, Relevant is a channel that is very politically identified, and not with the right wing. Is this something that is feared, to be painted politically?
"Those who watch 'Relevant' may think that what I say is what I believe in, but as far as I'm concerned, I start from the premise that I have no personal criticism at my age about anything I'm going to say. The fact is that I receive the text a minute before I do it. As far as I'm concerned, I playing now".
Yes, but you're playing Gilly. Your name is "our reporter Gili Itzkovich".
"So it's a very good moment in our interview to come and say that I don't agree with everything I say in 'Relevant'. Really, really not. I don't even know where I define myself on the political scale because I feel that right and left have long since disappeared. It has become a camp of Certain politicians and not camps that really connect to beliefs and ideology. I'm a terribly Zionist person, and I've already said how terribly important the army is to me, and I feel that it should place me very much on the right."
Not necessarily, leftists also love the army and define themselves as Zionists.
"True, true. Bottom line, I don't agree with everything I say, and the concept with Lior Shlain is that if I come and tell him: 'I don't like this line, can I change it?', he will probably kick me out."
Oh wow, I thought this sentence was going to end completely differently.
"No, no, the most important thing for Lior Shlain is that no one censors what he wants to say. I came to be a performer in this thing."
Everyone has a red line. Is there nothing you won't laugh at?
"I think as a joke, he keeps making fun of vegans. Do you know how many times I've made fun of vegans? So I make fun of vegans too. I have to say the only thing I'll probably put a red line on him today is if he says illegitimate things about the abductees. That's the line The only red in my life. Let me stand by Lior Shlain and say: 'Let's eat meat, I love meat' which goes against every basic principle of mine, just don't talk about the kidnapped."
The year before the war there was a crazy protest here, did it touch you?
"Very. Because of my sensitivity, it is very difficult for me to physically come to the demonstrations. It is something that is very difficult for me. I came to the protests, but not in the amount that feels right to me. I feel that I should be there every night."
You are talking about the current demonstrations of the families of the abductees , or to protests against the legal coup?
"Both. But it is something that demands a lot from me, physically and mentally. Almost always my way to present my opinion is on social networks. This is, for example, something that is important to me to publish on the networks."
Minister of Housing and Construction Yitzhak Goldknopf provoked a bit of anger when he said, "Who is wrong here?" at a time when there are 136 abductees in Gaza and tens of thousands of other Israelis who have been displaced from their homes. So I am not asking you about the present because it seems to me that the answer is clear, but How do you see the future of the country?
"It is very scary to bring children here. Assaf and I want to have children, obviously. We have been married for almost two years. I'm about to turn 30. We want children."
I promised you before the interview that I wouldn't ask you if you wanted children.
"You didn't ask, I'm saying to myself - I really want children, and I'm getting Assaf used to the idea that he too will want children soon. But for me there is a huge fear of bringing children to this country. I don't know what they will grow into. I have no confidence in this government. I have no confidence in today's reality. By the way, I also don't know who will replace Bibi. It's not that I'm saying I don't have confidence in this government and I have confidence in X. I have no confidence in anyone and that is what is scary in this country. I don't know who to trust. I have no horizon to look at him and say: 'Then it will be all right.' That's what's scary. My grandfather is a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor, and what I think he would want me to do is go into politics. We want good people in politics."
Like my darling Mordechai.
"Yes! exactly. Good people who look at this country and say, first of all, I want to restore this country and I want to make it a good place to live in and where you can have children. The better part of our generation should go to politics first. Politics today is a simply stinking place. Bad people get into politics. I don't look at our leaders and say 'these are good people whose good hearts I trust' and I think if I were less selfish I would go into politics."
Maybe it will come. After you were an officer and gave of yourself in the reserves, your moment will come in Hollywood and then after you win an Oscar
Come back
and join politics.
Where does the dream of being an actress in Hollywood stand right now?
"It's still a dream, but during my time in Los Angeles I managed to get myself a personal manager, a stunning American Jew. It turns out that she contacted Hadas Mozes from my agency in Israel and asked to promote Israeli actors who are in Los Angeles, precisely because of the situation in Israel. Then just before I suddenly returned I had a meeting with her, and I had this feeling that she wanted to help Jewish artists succeed, so in the end I was with her and I started getting auditions,
but let's say you get an audition for Los Angeles. ?
"Then fly. It's still my dream."
We see now that Hollywood is pretty much turning its back on Israel, and although there are still many Jews in key positions the feeling portrayed in the media is almost anti-Semitic. Are you afraid it will hurt your opportunities?
"People told me, 'Don't talk about your military service' when you're in Los Angeles. I feel completely the opposite. I am who I am. My Zionism, my Judaism, my Israeliness - that's who I am. And I just want to hope that this is something that will open up my The door, and something that they will accept, because it's not something I intend to hide anywhere, and I don't intend to make it disappear."