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Early life and education

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Career

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2008–2012: Early work and Neighbours

2013–2015: Breakthrough

2016–2018: Worldwide recognition

2019–present: Established actress and producer

Personal life

Other work

Public image

Filmography and awards

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Explanatory notes

References

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Margot Robbie

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Margot Robbie
Robbie in 2018

Born Margot Elise Robbie

2 July 1990 (age 34)

Dalby, Queensland,
Australia

Education Somerset College

Occupation  Actress
s
 producer

Years active 2008–present

Organizatio LuckyChap Entertainment

n

Works Full list

Spouse Tom Ackerley

(m. 2016)

Awards Full list

 Margot Robbie's voice

Duration: 26 seconds.0:26

Robbie speaking about her role

in Barbie (2023)

Margot Elise Robbie (/ˈmɑːrɡoʊ ˈrɒbi/ MAR-goh ROB-ee; born 2 July

1990) is an Australian actress and producer. Her work includes
both blockbuster and independent films, and her accolades include
nominations for three Academy Awards, six BAFTA Awards and four Golden
Globe Awards. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in
the world in 2017, and Forbes named her the world's highest-paid
actress in 2023.

Born and raised in Queensland, Robbie began her career in 2008 on the
television series Neighbours, on which she was a regular until 2011. After
moving to the United States, she led the television series Pan Am (2011–
2012) and had her breakthrough in 2013 with Martin Scorsese's black
comedy film The Wolf of Wall Street. She achieved wider recognition with
starring roles as Jane Porter in The Legend of Tarzan (2016), and as Harley
Quinn in the DC Extended Universe films beginning with Suicide
Squad (2016).

Robbie received critical acclaim and a nomination for the Academy Award
for Best Actress for her portrayal of figure skater Tonya Harding in the
biopic I, Tonya (2017). This acclaim continued for her performances
as Queen Elizabeth I in Mary Queen of Scots (2018), Sharon Tate in Once
Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), and a Fox News employee
in Bombshell (2019). The last of these earned her a nomination for
the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Robbie has since starred
as an aspiring actress in the period film Babylon (2022) and the titular
fashion doll in the fantasy comedy Barbie (2023), which emerged as her
highest-grossing release and, as its producer, earned her a nomination for
the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Robbie and her husband, filmmaker Tom Ackerley, co-founded the

production company LuckyChap Entertainment in 2014, under which they
have produced several films, including I, Tonya, Promising Young
Woman (2020), Barbie, and Saltburn (2023), as well as
the Hulu series Dollface (2019–2022) and
the Netflix miniseries Maid (2021).

Early life and education

Margot Elise Robbie was born on 2 July 1990 in Dalby, Queensland, to

Doug Robbie, a former farm-owner and sugarcane tycoon, and Sarie
Kessler, a physiotherapist.[1][2][3] She is the second youngest of four; older
siblings Anya and Lachlan and younger brother Cameron. [4][5] Her parents
separated when she was five.[6] Robbie and her siblings were raised by
their single mother and had minimal contact with their father. The family
spent the majority of Robbie's upbringing on her grandparents' Currumbin
Valley farm[7] in the Gold Coast hinterland.[8][9] An energetic child, Robbie
often put on shows in her house.[10]

She was enrolled in a circus school by her mother, where she excelled
in trapeze, in which she received a certificate at age eight. [11] In high
school, Robbie studied drama at Somerset College.[12] As a teenager, she
worked three jobs: she tended a bar, cleaned houses, and worked
at Subway.[13][14] After graduation, with a few commercials and
independent thriller films on her résumé, Robbie relocated to Melbourne to
begin acting professionally.[15]

Career

2008–2012: Early work and Neighbours

Robbie at the 2011 Logie Awards

Robbie's first acting roles came when she was in high school. She starred
in two low-budget independent thriller films, called Vigilante and I.C.U.,
both released years later. She described the experience of being on a film
set as "a dream come true".[16] She made her television debut in a 2008
guest role as Caitlin Brentford in the drama series City Homicide and
followed this with a two-episode arc in the children's television series The
Elephant Princess, in which she starred alongside Liam Hemsworth.[17]

With agent encouragement at the time and as Robbie recalled on The

Graham Norton Show,[18] she called FremantleMedia on a daily basis. "One
day, I got put through by accident to the casting director for Neighbours,"
and she said, "I'm in town working on something." The casting director
asked how old she was, and she responded "seventeen." She was told,
"We're looking for exactly that, come in and audition" [18] for the television
soap opera Neighbours. In June 2008, she began playing Donna Freedman,
a role that was meant to be a guest character, but Robbie was promoted
to the regular cast after she made her debut.[19] In her three-year stint on
the soap, she received two Logie Award nominations.[20]

Shortly after arriving in America, Robbie landed the role of Laura

Cameron, a newly trained flight attendant in the period drama series Pan
Am (2011). The series premiered to high ratings and positive reviews but
was cancelled after one season due to falling ratings. [21][22]

2013–2015: Breakthrough

Robbie next appeared in Richard Curtis' romantic comedy About

Time (2013), co-starring Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams. It tells
the story of a young man with the ability to time travel who tries to
change his past in hopes of improving his future. To play Gleeson's
unattainable teenage love interest, she adopted a British accent. [23] The
film was a modest commercial success.[24] Robbie's breakthrough came
the same year with the role of Naomi Lapaglia, the wife of
protagonist Jordan Belfort, in Martin Scorsese's biographical black
comedy The Wolf of Wall Street. In her audition for the role, Robbie
improvised a slap on co-star Leonardo DiCaprio during a fight scene which
ultimately won her the part.[25] The film and her performance received
positive reviews; she was particularly praised for her on-screen Brooklyn
accent.[26] Critic Sasha Stone wrote of Robbie's performance, "She's
Scorsese's best blonde bombshell discovery since Cathy
Moriarty in Raging Bull. Robbie is funny, hard and kills every scene she's
in."[27] The Wolf of Wall Street was a box office success, grossing
$392 million worldwide, making it Scorsese's highest-grossing film to date.
[28]
Robbie was nominated for the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough
Performance and won the Empire Award for Best Newcomer.[29]

Robbie at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con

She later said that the fame and attention the movie brought her led her
to consider quitting acting, but her mother was philosophical about her
profession and explained to her that it was probably too late to quit. She
fully understood and stuck with it.[30] With the aim to produce more
female-driven projects, Robbie and her future husband, Tom Ackerley, and
their respective longtime friends Sophia Kerr and Josey McNamara, started
their own production company LuckyChap Entertainment. The company
was founded in 2014, and its name was inspired by Charlie Chaplin.[6]

Robbie appeared in four films released in 2015. The first of these was
opposite Will Smith in Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's $158.8 million-
grossing romantic comedy-drama film Focus. In the film, she played an
inexperienced grifter learning the craft from Smith's character; she
learned how to pickpocket from Apollo Robbins for the role.[31][32] Reviews
of the film were generally mixed, but Robbie's performance was
praised; Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote, "Robbie is wow and then
some. Even when Focus fumbles, [she] deals a winning hand."[33] She was
nominated for the Rising Star Award at the 68th British Academy Film
Awards.[34] Her next appearance was alongside Michelle
Williams and Kristin Scott Thomas in Saul Dibb's war romantic
drama Suite Française, a film based on the second part of Irène
Némirovsky's 2004 novel of the same name. In the film, she played a
woman falling for a German soldier during the German occupation of
France during World War II, a role which Leslie Felperin of The Hollywood
Reporter found "underwritten".[35]

She followed this with Craig Zobel's post-apocalyptic drama Z for

Zachariah opposite Chris Pine and Chiwetel Ejiofor, in her first leading role.
Partially based on Robert C. O'Brien's book of the same name, the film
follows Ann Burden (Robbie) as she finds herself in an emotionally charged
love triangle with the last known survivors of a disaster that wipes out
most of civilization. In preparation for the film, Robbie dyed her hair brown
and learned to speak in an Appalachian accent.[36] The film received
positive reviews, and Robbie's performance was widely praised, with Drew
McWeeny of HitFix asserting that "Robbie's work here establishes her as
one of the very best actresses in her age range today." [37][38] Her fourth
release of 2015 was a cameo appearance in Adam McKay's comedy-
drama The Big Short, in which she breaks the fourth wall to
explain subprime mortgages while in a bathtub. The Big Short was a
commercial and critical success and Robbie's cameo became a trending
topic six years later, in the wake of the GameStop short squeeze, as her
explanation provided reference points for what was happening with the
GameStop and related stocks.[39]
2016–2018: Worldwide recognition

In 2016, Robbie reunited with Ficarra and Requa, playing a British war
correspondent in the film adaptation of The Taliban Shuffle,
called Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, co-starring Tina Fey and Martin Freeman.[40]
[41]
Later that year, Robbie took on the part of Jane Porter in David Yates's
adventure film The Legend of Tarzan. She was adamant about not losing
weight and ensuring the role was not a damsel in distress like in
previous Tarzan adaptations.[42] Reviews of the film were generally
unfavourable,[43] but Manohla Dargis of The New York Times credited
Robbie for "holding her own" in her supporting role alongside the all-male
cast with Alexander Skarsgård and Samuel L. Jackson.[44]

Robbie became the first person to portray DC Comics villain Harley

Quinn in live-action when she signed on to David Ayer's 2016 superhero
film Suicide Squad alongside an ensemble cast that included Will
Smith, Jared Leto and Viola Davis. She admitted to having never read the
comics, but felt a huge responsibility to do the character justice and
satisfy the fans.[45] Robbie began preparing for the role of
the supervillainess six months prior to the film shoot; her schedule
consisted of gymnastics, boxing, aerial silk training and learning how to
hold her breath underwater for five minutes. She performed the majority
of her own stunts in the film.[46] Suicide Squad was a commercial success
and was tenth-highest-grossing film of 2016 with global revenues of
$746.8 million, and Robbie's performance was considered its prime asset.
[47]
Writing for Time, Stephanie Zacharek found Robbie to be "a criminally
appealing actress, likable in just about every way" despite finding flaws in
the character[48] and Christopher Orr of The Atlantic called her
performance "genuinely terrific".[49] At the annual People's Choice
Awards ceremony, she won the Favorite Action Movie Actress award and
was also awarded the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress in an
Action Movie.[50][51] In October 2016, Robbie hosted the season 42 premiere
of NBC's late-night sketch comedy Saturday Night Live; her appearances
included a parody of Ivanka Trump.[52] The series logged its strongest
season premiere ratings in eight years.[53] Robbie collaborated with
Domhnall Gleeson in Simon Curtis' Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017), a
biographical drama about the lives of Winnie-the-Pooh creator A. A.
Milne and his family. The film, and her performance, received modest
reviews and was a commercial failure.[54][55]
 Robbie in 2016

Her final release of 2017 and LuckyChap Entertainment's first release

was Craig Gillespie's sports black comedy I, Tonya, based on the life of
American figure skater Tonya Harding (Robbie) and her connection to
the 1994 assault on rival Nancy Kerrigan. In preparation, Robbie met with
Harding, watched old footage and interviews of her, worked with a voice
coach to speak in Harding's Pacific Northwest accent and vocal timbre at
different ages, and underwent several months of rigorous skating
instruction with choreographer Sarah Kawahara.[56][57] I, Tonya premiered
at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival to critical acclaim.[58] James
Luxford of Metro deemed it Robbie's best performance to date, and Mark
Kermode of The Observer wrote, "Margot Robbie's performance in this
satirical, postmodern tale of the disgraced star is a tour-de-force tornado
that balances finely nuanced character development with impressively
punchy physicality".[59][60] She received numerous accolades for her
performance, including nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA
Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Critics'
Choice Movie Award, all for Best Actress.[61]

Robbie began 2018 with the voice role of Flopsy Rabbit in Peter Rabbit, an
animated comedy from director Will Gluck, which is based on the Beatrix
Potter book series. The animated feature was a box office success,
grossing $351.3 million worldwide against a production budget of $50
million.[62] Her next two 2018 films—the neo-noir thriller Terminal and
comedy-horror Slaughterhouse Rulez—were critical and commercial
failures. The historical drama Mary Queen of Scots, directed by Josie
Rourke, was her final release of 2018. The film featured Saoirse Ronan as
the titular character and Robbie as her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, and it
chronicles the 1569 conflict between their two countries. Robbie had
initially turned down the role for being "terrified" of not living up to the
history of portrayals of the Queen.[63] Before each day of shooting, she
spent three hours in the make-up chair while a prosthetic nose, painted on
boils and blisters were applied.[64] Critics dismissed the film for its
screenplay and several historical inaccuracies, but praised the
performances of Robbie and Ronan.[65] Yolanda Machado
of TheWrap wrote, "[B]ow down to Ronan and Robbie for taking two
legendarily complex characters, [...] and completely owning both roles.
Ronan's fiery Mary and Robbie's emotionally complex Elizabeth truly reign
divine on screen."[66] For her portrayal, Robbie received nominations for
a BAFTA Award and for a Screen Actors Guild Award.[67]

2019–present: Established actress and producer

Robbie at the premiere of Once Upon a Time in

Hollywood in 2019

Robbie's first release of 2019 was the LuckyChap Entertainment

production Dreamland, a poorly received period crime thriller set during
the 1930s Dust Bowl.[68] She began executive producing the comedy
series Dollface, which streamed on Hulu from 2019 to 2022.[69] Robbie was
filmmaker Quentin Tarantino's only choice to portray the late
actress Sharon Tate in his period film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,
starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt.[70] With the Tate–LaBianca
murders serving as a backdrop, the film tells the story of a
fading character actor (DiCaprio) and his stunt double (Pitt) as they
navigate New Hollywood in 1969 Los Angeles.[71] Feeling "an enormous
sense of responsibility", Robbie prepared for the role by meeting Tate's
family members and friends, watching all of her films and reading the
autobiography by Tate's then-husband, Roman Polanski.[72] Once Upon a
Time in Hollywood premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival to critical
acclaim, and was a commercial success with a worldwide gross of $374.3
million.[73] Despite many bemoaning Robbie's lack of lines in the film,
[74]
Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph highlighted a scene with Robbie in
the cinema, which he found to be the film's "most delightful" scene. [75]

Also in 2019, she starred as Kayla Pospisil, a composite character based

on several Fox News employees, in Jay Roach's drama Bombshell. Co-
starring Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman, the film recounts stories of
various female personnel at the news network and their sexual
harassment by the network's chairman Roger Ailes.[76] Robbie based her
character's accent on Katherine Harris.[77] The film received positive
reviews;[78] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Robbie [is] at
her best, the arc of her story is so crushing that it stays with you the
longest."[79] For her performances in Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood and Bombshell, she received two nominations for the BAFTA
Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role,[a][80] and for the latter she
received nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a
Screen Actors Guild Award; all in the Best Supporting Actress category. [81]

Robbie began the new decade by reprising the role of Harley Quinn
in Cathy Yan's Birds of Prey (2020). Determined to make a female
ensemble action film, she pitched the idea for the film to Warner Bros. in
2015. Robbie spent the subsequent three years developing the project
under her production company, making a concerted effort to hire a female
director and screenwriter.[82] Birds of Prey, along with Robbie's
performance, gained generally positive reviews; [83][84][85] Ian
Freer of Empire wrote that "the MVP is Robbie, who lends Harley charming
quirk and believable menace, hinting at Harley's inner life without reams
of dialogue."[86] She received two nominations at the 46th People's Choice
Awards.[87]

Robbie served as a producer on Promising Young Woman (2020), a

comedy thriller by writer-director Emerald Fennell, starring Carey
Mulligan as a woman who seeks to avenge the rape and death of her best
friend. The film received acclaim,[88][89] earning a nomination for
the Academy Award for Best Picture.[90] In 2021, Robbie reprised her voice
role as Flopsy Rabbit in Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, which received
mixed reviews and grossed $153.8 million worldwide. [91][92] She also made
her third outing as