Rotem Sela (Hebrew: רותם סלע-רוטר; born 16 August 1983) is an Israeli model, television presenter, and actress who starred as Noa Hollander on the Israeli television series Beauty and the Baker (2013–2021) and has co-hosted the singing reality show Rising Star since 2014. In 2022, she was described by Haaretz as "the most successful actress in Israel right now."
In 2023, she began starring in A Body That Works, Israel's highest-rated drama of that year. She won Best Actress at Series Mania for her role and was also a Best Actress nominee for the Awards of the Israeli Television Academy. In 2026, she was awarded the Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy award at the Awards of the Israeli Television Academy for her role in the second season of Bloody Murray (2022–present).
Early life
Sela was born and raised in Kiryat Haim, Haifa, to Liora (Shaulski), a teacher and Avraham, a CEO of a medical equipment company. She is of Polish-Jewish and Turkish-Jewish descent. Her family moved to Caesarea when she was 17.
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.”
Sela began her modelling career at the age of 15, when she was signed by modelling agent Roberto Ben Shoshan.
In 2013 she was cast as the female lead in Beauty and the Baker alongside Aviv Alush after Bar Refaeli exited the role. Sela played Noa Hollander, a privileged Ashkenazi model and heiress who falls in love with a working-class Yemenite baker, Amos Dahari (Alush). The series was positively reviewed by the newspaper Haaretz. In 2017, Amazon acquired global rights to the first two seasons of the show to stream them worldwide on Amazon Prime Video.
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.
It was released internationally by Netflix.
In January 2025, Sela starred alongside Lior Raz and Zohar Strauss in the Israeli drama, Soda by Erez Tadmor. It is based on the story of Tadmor's grandfather, a Jewish partisan during the Second World War, and his subsequent post-war life in Israel. The film centers on an accusation that Sela's character on the Kibbutz was a Kapo during the Holocaust.
In 2025, Sela and Lior Raz co-created and took part in Off Road, a Netflix documentary-reality series following the two on a journey through Central Asia, produced with Keshet International. Maariv reported that it was the most-watched show in Israel in the two weeks after its release.
In the same year she starred in Red Alert, a drama series based upon real life events from the October 7 attacks. The limited series was produced by American producer Lawrence Bender and was scheduled to be released internationally by Paramount+ and on Channel 12 in Israel on October 7, 2025.
Additional work
As a model, she has fronted campaigns for the fashion brand Castro alongside Alush.
In 2025, she was briefly featured on Idan Amedi's sixth studio album, Superman, with a spoken part.
Personal life
In 2010, she married Israeli businessman Ariel Rotter, with whom she has three children.
Sela became a vegetarian in 2007, and then began to take on veganism as well. In an interview with Pnai Plus in December 2015, she defined herself as "90% vegan". 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.
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, "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."
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