Oscar Profile #487: Margot Robbie

Born July 2, 1990 in Dalby, Queensland, Australia to Scottish parents, Margot Robbie was one of four children of Sarie Kessler, a physiotherapist, and Doug Robbie, a former farm owner. She and her three siblings, two brothers and a sister, were raised by her single mother with minimal contact with her father.

After graduating from Somerset College in Queensland, Robbie moved to Melbourne, Australia to pursue an acting career. By 2008, she had guest roles in two Australian TV series and made her big-screen debut in 2008’s Vigilante in which she was fourth billed, followed by 2009’s ICU in which she was top-billed. From 2008-2011, she co-starred in the TV series, Neighbors for which she was twice nominated for Australian TV awards. She followed that with another TV series, Pan Am from 2011-2012.

Robbie first gained international attention with Richard Curtis’ 2013 film, About Time in which she played in support of Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy. Later that year, she received worldwide acclaim for her portrayal of Leonard DiCaprio’s wife in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. It was during that year that she met future husband Tom Ackerley, an assistant director on the 2014 film, Suite Francaise in which she was third billed behind Michelle Williams and Kristin Scott Thomas.

In 2015, Robbie starred opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor in Z for Zachariah and Will Smith in Focus. She also had a cameo in The Big Short, one of that year’s Oscar nominees for Best Picture. In 2016, she starred opposite Tina Fey in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Alexander Skarsgard in The Legend of Tarzan and Smith again in Suicide Squad before marrying Ackerley the week before Christmas of that year.

2017 brought Robbie her first Oscar nomination for I, Tonya in which she played disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding. She also had a major role in that year’s Goodbye Christopher Robin opposite Domhnall Gleeson.

Robbie was in the conversation to receive a second Oscar nomination for 2018’s Mary Queen of Scots opposite Saoirse Ronan but that failed to materialize despite a BAFTA nomination for her acclaimed portrayal of Elizabeth I. In 2019, she was in the conversation for an Oscar nomination once again. The only question was which of her supporting turns would she be nominated for. Would it be Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood or Bombshell? BAFTA sidestepped the question by nominating her for both, but since Oscar only allows one nomination for an actress per category, she had to settle for a solo Oscar nod for Bombshell.

Margot Robbie is one of our busiest and most interesting actresses at 30 with four films currently in some state of production and four more announced.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013), directed by Martin Scorsese

Scorsese’s most controversial film was also the biggest hit of his career. Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of the debauched and manipulative Wall Street honcho Jordan Belfort is generally considered to be the best of his career. Robbie’s portrayal of his hedonistic second wife was one of the year’s most notable breakthrough performances. Scorsese had wanted her to wear a bathrobe during her much talked about seduction of DiCaprio, but she insisted on doing it nude, then lied about it to her family, telling them it was a body double with her head superimposed over it, finally admitting the truth when the films was released.

I, TONYA (2017), directed by Craig Gillespie

Robbie trained extensively for her portrayal of disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding for which she did most of her own skating. She couldn’t, however, do a triple axel, something that few women can do, so the rare feat was accomplished with visual effects. Robbie’s performance received numerous award recognition including her first Oscar nomination. Allison Janney, who played her nasty mother, won numerous awards for her performance including an Oscar. Although the basic story is true, much of the dialogue was the invention of the screenwriter including Robbie’s most famous line, “suck my dick!”

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS (2018), directed by Josie Rourke

In real life, the Scottish queen and her nemesis, Britain’s Elizabeth I, never met, but in all dramatic version of the story, they do. In both 1936’s Mary of Scotland and 1971’s Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth, played by Florence Eldredge and Glenda Jackson respectively, visits Mary, played by Katharine Hepburn and Vanessa Redgrave respectively, in the Tower of London shortly before her execution. In this version, Elizabeth, played by Robbie, meets Mary, played by Saoirse Ronan, in a tent on the battlefield prior to her imprisonment. In all three versions, the meeting was the film’s dramatic highlight.

ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD (2019), directed by Quentin Tarantino

Tarantino’s revisionist Hollywood history takes place in 1969 the year of the Manson murders in which Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, and her friend Jay Sebring, were two of the victims. This being Tarantino and in some ways a comedy, the two played by Robbie and Emile Hirsch are spared and the Manson invasion has a different outcome revolving around Tate’s neighbor, a fading western star, played by Leonard DiCaprio and his stunt double, played by Oscar winner Brad Pitt. Robbie’s big scene is one in which the vacuous Tate goes to see herself in a movie and makes a point of telling the cashier who she is.

BOMBSHELL (1997), directed Jay Roach

Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman as Fox News anchors Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson were the main attraction as the principal women in the suit against Fox News head Roger Ailes and the toxic atmosphere he presided over at the network, and they are both terrific, but so is Robbie as a fictional character, a composite of lesser known women at the network who were used and abused. All three were nominated for various awards but only Theron and Robbie got as far as the Oscars where they lost as expected to Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland in Judy and Laura Dern as a nasty lawyer in Marriage Story.