The star of her time: Margot Robbie By: Justin Tallis
The key to understanding Margot Robbie is not the roles she played or her professional moves. This is a WhatsApp message she sent in October 2017.
A few months before receiving her first Oscar nomination for her role in the figure skating drama I, Tonya, the 27-year-old actress was scheduled to perform at a glamorous evening dedicated to women in Hollywood.
She almost touched on the #MeToo scandals that were unfolding at the time: just two days earlier, the New York Times published an exposure of Harvey Weinstein. But what additional light could she shed personally? To address this issue, she sent out an appeal to her London group chat of young women working in the industry, mostly behind the scenes. What should she lift there? What important stories have been left untold? The stream of responses that followed was compiled by her into an open letter, which she later read at the event. It was not signed by Robbie herself, but simply “The Girls Club”.
What do we learn from this? First, that she is not averse to doing her homework. But second, and more importantly, even four years after her career turnaround in The Wolf of Wall Street—by this point she was already a comic book heroine, starred in a brilliant con-artist adventurism with Will Smith, and become famous enough to play herself in The Big Short—a vanity that so often goes hand in hand with an early movie star (an ego journey in equal parts and a survival strategy), just never worked.
Six years later, she has become literally the embodiment of Barbie; the star of the plastic-doll-themed summer comedy that you may have heard about is hitting theaters despite its almost inconspicuous marketing campaign. But from the point of view of toys, she still prefers to be non-standard and lie in a box.
Lead: Margot Robbie as Barbie. Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures
This attitude dates back to her soap opera days, when fast-paced episodes were a team effort and the usual Hollywood hierarchy (stars and mortals, actors and crew) simply didn't exist. Like other Australian stars before her – Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue – she honed her craft on Neighbours, moving to Melbourne from a family farm in rural Queensland and hitting the role at 17.
She was cast as Donna Friedman, a quirky free spirit who was originally only going to appear in short episodes. In the end, she stayed on 327 – and they would have gladly kept her longer if other doors had not begun to swing open enticingly on the other side of the planet.
She moved to Hollywood at 21, during the annual pilot season tryout binge, and a few weeks later landed a role opposite Christina Ricci on the historical drama series Pan Am. The show tried to do for the stewardess what Mad Men did for the advertising business, but it was canceled after one season, and the loneliness of her private trailer made Robbie miss the fellowship cafeteria of the Neighbors era. p>Now that she had a freer schedule, she again auditioned – and Martin Scorsese chose her in The Wolf of Wall Street over more established talents like Blake Lively and Amber Heard when, improvising while reading with Leonardo DiCaprio, she punched her co-star in the face from the list. No vanity, no hierarchy: this also applies to colleagues.
Scorsese later raved in Time about the classic Hollywood actresses whose trademarks she brought to the present: “Carol Lombard for her uncompromising sass; Joan Crawford for her down to earth, unwavering resilience; Ida Lupino for her emotional courage. Margot has it all in addition to a unique sass that surprises and challenges and just burns like a brand in every character she plays.”
But for Josie Rourke, who directed Bafta-nominated Robbie as Elizabeth I in the 2018 film Mary, Queen of Scots, the journey's historical direction has reversed. “Many of her best-known roles, from The Wolf of Wall Street to Suicide Squad to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, have been called spectacular, and I think people are implying that they fit the 20th-century idea of female sexuality in film,” she says.
“But Margo is inherently a 21st century performer — she understands what the image is and how to access it, but she also talks to it and can reflect on her role in its authorship.” In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, this process became the film's greatest scene: Robbie, as Sharon Tate, sits in a movie theater watching the real Sharon Tate play Freya Carlson, the sexy slut, in Wrecking Crew, losing herself in the hall of mirrors and enjoying the reaction it elicits from others.
Managing her image: Margot Robbie. Photo: Alami
Perhaps this explains why Barbie was Robbie's idea. After a previous iteration of the film flopped, she went to meet Mattel in 2018 to get her bearings on this Stepford mid-century femininity icon (yes, yes, Barbie was also a politician and astronaut), and then spent a year convincing Greta Gerwig to direct and co-write.
“There are people who love Barbies, there are people who hate Barbies, but the bottom line is everyone knows Barbies,” Robbie later told the New Yorker, before admitting her deconstructivist approach was “a challenge” for a summer movie based on the popular toy brand. “The most dangerous thing about doing something for everyone is that you end up doing it for no one.” At one point, she had a lengthy argument with the custodians of the Barbie brand over a proposed scene in which her character (known as “Stereotypical Barbie”) is accused of damaging girls' self-esteem. After six hours of discussion, it was decided to keep it.
For Robbie, that kind of control matters. One of the first things she did after The Wolf of Wall Street was to form her own production company LuckyChap Entertainment with a few close friends and her then-partner (and now husband) Tom Ackerley. (She met Ackerley when he was assistant director on her 2014 film Suite Française: once again, the crew paid off.)
Bee films an infamous scene as Sharon T. Eli in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Image Credit & Copyright: Andrew Cooper.
Their first film, I, Tonya, retold the Tonya Harding scandal of the figure skating world: like Barbie Robbie, the actress embraced her as a love-or-hate figure, and the role earned her her first Oscar nomination. A few years later, LuckyChap co-produced Birds of Prey, a comic book spin-off that saw Suicide Squad's Harley Quinn (Robbie) take center stage and regain control of her own destiny and image.
Rourke recalls watching Robbie in the original Suicide Squad before filming Mary Queen of Scots “and realized that so much of star power is a virtue. I mean, the film had a completely insane role, but she gave an incredibly decent performance in the midst of a lot of other things that were spinning. For Rourke, that's what makes her a movie actress for the ages: “It's a dignified, down-to-earth presence where she can just hold a moment on screen for herself, instantly making a pact between her and the audience: 'Don't worry, wherever it goes, you're safe with me.'”
Over the years, other unmade versions of the Barbie movie have come and gone: Anne Hathaway and Amy Schumer were at one stage linked to earlier versions of the project. Perhaps Robbie feels so suited because of that certainty – and perhaps because, like Sharon Tate watching herself on screen, there's this streak of distance and playful curiosity about the mechanisms by which this fantasy is created.
In short, she's in on the jokes and wants you to be with her too.
Barbie is in theaters
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