Hadas Yaron

Yaron studied in the theater program at Tel Aviv’s High School of the Arts and served in the Israel Defense Forces as a boarding-school instructor.[6] She was reported to be 22 in 2012, when she gained international recognition for Fill the Void.[3]

Her early screen work included a small part in Shmuel Haimovich’s Summer Story and the role of Talia, a friend of the central character, in Dani Sirkin’s Out of Sight.[6][7] Recalling her beginnings in a 2019 interview, Yaron said she delivered a single line in Summer Story at 13, after which casting director Hila Yuval began inviting her to auditions; Sirkin cast her in Out of Sight within months.[7] Sirkin recalled that an acquaintance had recommended Yaron for an audition and that she performed well despite her lack of experience.[6] She still had relatively little professional acting experience when she was cast in Fill the Void.[6]

Yaron’s breakthrough came as Shira, an 18-year-old Hasidic woman, in Rama Burshtein’s Fill the Void.[3][8] The story centers on a marriage decision: after Shira’s older sister dies in childbirth, her family asks her to marry her widowed brother-in-law.[8] Yaron was herself secular and said that learning about the community required work.[8] She distinguished herself from Shira by explaining that the character was encountering certain feelings for the first time.[8]

Burshtein worked closely with the cast, inviting them to events and Friday-night meals as part of their engagement with the world depicted in the film.[9] Yaron’s performance earned her the Coppa Volpi, or Volpi Cup, for Best Actress at the 69th Venice Film Festival in 2012.[3] It was her first major role and made her the first Israeli actress to receive the festival’s Best Actress award.[2][3]

After traveling to Venice for the screening, Yaron returned to her job serving customers at a café on Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street before being called back for the award ceremony.[10] She recalled initially thinking that the producer wanted her to return because Burshtein observed Shabbat, rather than because she herself had won a prize.[11] The request eventually led her to suspect that she might receive something, but she nevertheless found the win surprising and the experience confusing.[9] Describing the abrupt contrast between the festival and her ordinary working life, she said, “It’s funny that one night you’re in an evening gown and the next you’re back to serving coffee in the cafe.”[10]

Fill the Void also brought Yaron the Ophir Award for Best Actress.[12] The film won seven Ophir Awards and was selected to represent Israel in the Academy Awards’ foreign-language film category.[12] It had screened in both Toronto and Venice before the Ophir ceremony.[13]

Yaron’s later film roles included Meira in Felix and Meira in 2014, followed by Mary in Lucia’s Grace and Sarah in Mary Magdalene, both released in 2018.[4] In Lucia’s Grace, Italian director Gianni Zanasi cast her as the Virgin Mary.[7] Yaron recalled that Zanasi suggested having her character speak one line in Hebrew, after which she spoke Italian in the film.[7] She also described playing a British pop singer in a later Italian film, a role that did not require her to speak a particular language.[7]

On Israeli television, Yaron played Libbi in Shtisel, including its second season.[4][14] Libbi is Akiva’s betrothed, and their relationship includes arguments about his pursuit of art.[14] Yaron returned to the character in the 2024 prequel series Kugel, set in Antwerp before the family moves to Jerusalem.[4][15] In the prequel, Libbi is Nuchem Shtisel’s daughter, a teacher at a girls’ school who has begun writing fiction and wants to become a writer.[15][16] She also helps her mother, who makes bridal gowns, while facing expectations that she will marry.[15][16]

In the miniseries We Were the Lucky Ones, Yaron played Mila Kurc, a young mother separated from her husband who struggles to keep her young daughter safe.[5] The role carried a personal connection for Yaron, who is the granddaughter of two Holocaust survivors.[5] She spoke about her great-grandfather’s murder and its resemblance to a scene in the series.[5] Reflecting on her family’s survival and her own participation in telling such a story, she said, “somehow, 70, 80 years later, the fact that his daughter survived and escaped and her granddaughter is here telling [this] story… life is surreal and crazy.”[5]

Yaron played Nili in Maya Kenig’s The Milky Way, also known as Milk, listed in her filmography as a 2024 release.[2][4] Nili is an affluent, anxious woman who is too depressed to nurse her child.[2][11] The film follows Tala, a new single mother played by Hila Ruach, who sells breast milk to make ends meet and develops a relationship with Nili, one of her customers.[11] Despite their different circumstances, the women bond over ambivalence about motherhood, and their relationship brings together the film’s concerns with parenting and class differences.[2][11] Yaron said she filmed the movie before becoming pregnant and connected with its script while she was still uncertain about becoming a parent.[11]

Yaron’s 2012 Venice award marked the first Volpi Cup for Best Actress won by an Israeli actress.[2] Her performance in Fill the Void received recognition both internationally at Venice and within Israel through the Ophir Awards.[3][12] Discussing the character’s effect on her, she said that playing Shira had taught her to see people who were different from herself and to believe in the power of love.[3]

By 2025, Yaron’s career encompassed Israeli television, Italian and Québécois films, and the American series We Were the Lucky Ones.[11] She described the Holocaust series as especially meaningful to its cast and crew because many participants had personal connections to the Holocaust.[11] Her own account linked the experience of playing Mila to her family’s history of persecution and survival.[5]

Yaron also reflected on the expectations created by achieving major recognition early in her career.[11] Looking back on the Venice win, she said, in English translation, “I thought that if I made one amazing film, all the films that came after it would be like that, and I didn’t understand that not every film would be at the level of winning a Venice festival.”[11]