Rotem Sela-Rotter (Hebrew: רותם סלע-רוטר; néeSela; born 16 August 1983) is an Israeli model, television presenter, and actress; best known for starring as Noa Hollander on the Israeli television series Beauty and the Baker (2013–2021).
Early life
Rotem Sela (רותם סלע) was born and raised in Kiryat Haim, Haifa, Israel to Liora and Avraham Sela. She is of Polish-Jewish descent and Turkish-Jewish descent.[4][5][6][7][8][9] She is the youngest daughter and her elder sister is Tal Sela.[10] Sela's family and she moved to the affluent city of Caesarea, Israel, when Sela was 17.[1] Her common Hebrew first name is a derivative of the biblical flowering bush Retama, while her surname means "a rock" in Hebrew.
Sela has said that she prioritises having a career in Israel instead of pursuing opportunities elsewhere; “Tel Aviv cannot be replaced by any city in the world. It’s always surprising to people, but it’s really not my dream to succeed in America, I want to succeed here, to work here, to do Israeli work … it was important to me to stay here.”[3]
In 2013 she was cast as the female lead in Beauty and the Baker alongside Alush after Bar Refaeli exited the role.[11] Sela plays Noa Hollander a privileged Ashkenazi model and heiress that falls in love with a working-class Yemenite baker Amos Dahari (Alush). The series was positively reviewed by Haaretz newspaper.[12] In 2017 Amazon acquired global rights of the first two seasons of the show to stream them worldwide on Amazon Prime Video.[13]
In 2023 she starred alongside Yehuda Levi in A Body That Works, a surrogacy drama series on Keshet 12. The series was a major success in Israel, and was the highest rated drama of 2023 in the country. Sela won the Best Actress award for an international series at Series Mania in France.[16]
It was released internationally by Netflix.[17][18]
In 2010 she married Israeli businessman Ariel Rotter, with whom she has three children.[3]
Sela became a vegetarian in 2007 and then began to approach veganism as well. In an interview with the Pnai Plus newspaper in November 2015, she defined herself as "90% vegan".[23][24] In 2014, she participated in a broadcast by the Vegan Friendly organization, which opposes the harm to cows in the dairy industry and calls for avoiding the consumption of dairy products.[25][26]
Sela has supported LGBT rights, telling ynet in 2015 that "I would give Nora Grinberg a torch, she's among the first [openly] transgender people in Israel, and it's very important that gays, lesbians and transgenders get a stage." And when asked whether the #MeToo movement had become too extreme she replied that "The situation before the #MeToo movement was extreme, this world in which men allowed themselves to talk and behave to women in an uninhibited way. The campaign is very important, and even if at the moment it feels to some people too extreme, it is okay and eventually the middle will be found."[3]
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