Gal Gadot: 'Torturous Wonder Woman prep paid off'

Gal Gadot insists the "torture" of training for Wonder Woman was worth it, because she's grown in physical strength.

The Israeli actress made her debut as the superhero in 2016's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and can be seen fronting her own movie alongside Chris Pine and Robin Wright this summer (17). Preparing for the project was physically demanding on Gal, but she feels all the hard work has paid off now she's evolved in her own skin.

"Crawling through the mud in a tiny skirt is harder than you'd think," she told Britain's The Sun on Sunday newspaper.

"But I stopped being too skinny and the torture was worth it in the end. I felt like I was a little girl, looking up at Mount Kilimanjaro and thinking every day, 'How the f**k am I going to climb the entire way up?' Slowly but surely, and with the right team, I did it."

The journey wasn't without its hiccups though as the brunette beauty admitted she felt exhausted a lot of the time and was tempted to come up with excuses to get out of training.

There was another perk to working out so much though as she noted her figure-hugging costume felt a lot more comfortable after she got into shape for the job.

"I couldn't breathe when I first tried the costume on, it was so tight," she recalled. "So I went to the gym, tried it on again and it felt great, a much better fitting, so they made it tighter. I made it very clear that I needed to have some oxygen going through my body to shoot the movie. We adjusted the costume and I wore it every single day, and we shot over 117 days."

Fans got a proper glimpse at Gal, 32, in action when a full trailer of Wonder Woman was shown at the 2017 MTV Movie & TV Awards on Sunday night ahead of the film's release next month.