Mesmerising twenty-nine-year old actor and producer Margot Robbie plays wild, uninhibited characters who are also, in today’s shameless age, completely realistic. Her role as manic villain Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad (2016) saw her outperform her co-stars and led to a new film, Birds of Prey, produced by her own company. Robbie has received two Oscar nominations, the first for her smart, outrageous lead performance in I,Tonya (2017) and another for her supporting role in biopic Bombshell (2019).
RAPID RISE
Born in a small town in Queensland, Robbie studied drama before being cast in the long-running TV soap opera Neighbours. A relocation to London saw her star in British romantic comedy About Time (2013). Another move to Los Angeles saw her take on the role of Jordan Belfort’s wife Naomi in Martin Scorsese’s black comedy The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), which also starred Leonardo DiCaprio.
NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE
2015 was a huge year for Robbie: she starred opposite Will Smith in the romantic comedy-drama film Focus, playing a petty criminal learning the craft from Smith’s character. That same year she also played the leading role of a nuclear apocalypse survivor in Z for Zachariah, based loosely on the book by Robert C. O’Brien. She also appeared alongside Michelle Williams and Kristin Scott Thomas in romantic World War II drama film Suite Française, an adaptation of Irène Némirovsky’s novel.
ON THE ICE
In biopic I, Tonya, Robbie plays notorious 1990s figure skater Tonya Harding, accused of being behind an attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan. The mockumentary, directed by Craig Gillespie, was a critical success with massive praise for Robbie and co-star Caitlin Carver. More recently, after portraying the late actor Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino’s comedy-drama Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Robbie joined Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman in the movie Bombshell, based on a real life story of three Fox News employees who accused the network’s chairman of sexual harassment.
AN AUSTRALIAN BARBIE
Inspired by the experience of playing Queen Elizabeth I in Mary Queen of Scots, Margot Robbie is currently creating a new TV series that approaches Shakespeare plays from a female perspective. She is also playing Barbie in a live-action film co-written and directed by Greta Gerwig!