Getting to Know: Margot Robbie

As it was released to such little fanfare, you could be forgiven for having missed a film about a doll that first went on sale on 13 February 1959. Cinema Paradiso, however, would like to draw your attention to the woman who made Barbie possible, its co-producer and star, Margot Robbie.

People have been trying to pin labels on Margot Robbie since she left home as a teenager. An easy tag was 'the hottest blonde ever', the description of her character in the script for her breakthrough picture. However, she loathes being thought of as a blonde bombshell, as the concept reeks of the patriarchal complacency she has spent much of her career combatting.

In a widely discredited Vanity Fair profile from 2016, it was revealed that producer Jerry Weintraub had believed Robbie was the new Audrey Hepburn. However, co-star Allison Janney came closer to the mark when she said that Robbie reminded her of Katharine Hepburn around the time she sought to restore her reputation with George Cukor's The Philadelphia Story (1940). According to Martin Scorsese, Robbie shares characteristics with two more Golden Age icons, Carole Lombard and Joan Crawford.

The truth is, Robbie is unique. She's an actor who moves easily between indies and blockbusters and a producer who is trying to redress an imbalance that has existed as long as Hollywood by trying to tell stories about women from a female perceptive. Moreover, she's making things happen and giving women writers and directors the space to make a difference by making different kinds of films. Rather than try to pigeonhole Robbie, we should celebrate the fact that she has had the courage to go her own way and the focus to get there.

Perhaps Ryan Gosling came closest to summing her up when he declared, 'She has a kind of fearlessness that you can only get from literally growing up swimming in shark-infested waters.'

Gold Coast Grounding

Margot Elise Robbie was born on 2 July 1990 in Dalby, Queensland. Along with siblings Anya, Lachlan, and Cameron, she didn't see much of farmer father Doug after her parents divorced when she was five. However, she had a happy childhood with physiotherapist mother Sarie at the farm belonging to her grandparents in Currumbin Valley on the Gold Coast.

Robbie is very guarded about her private life, but she has revealed, 'I grew up in a very loud, busy house, and so I feel safe and comfortable when there is chaos around me. I think it's why I love movie sets.' Energetic and sporty as a child, Robbie often put on little shows for the family. Recognising her talent, Sarie enrolled her in a circus school, where she received a trapeze certificate at the age of eight.

At Somerset College, it was presumed that Robbie would go to university to study law. But she also enjoyed performing. 'When I was little,' she told one interviewer, 'I thought I was going to be a magician. I had tricks and thought they were genius. I didn't decide, "I'm going to be an actress." I didn't know that was a job. I thought that only happened to people born in Hollywood. But I put on shows at home, and I used to watch videos over and over and knew them by heart. I did drama at school and was in all the plays just because I liked doing it.'

Ramsay Street Calling

While still at school, Robbie was cast as Cassandra in Aash Aaron's indie thriller, Vigilante (2008), in which Robert Diaz learns a brutal form of hand-to-hand combat in order to avenge his girlfriend's rape and murder. When the female lead dropped out, a second role followed in the same director's I.C.U. (2009), in which Tristen (Robbie) and Troy Waters (Christian Radford) come to suspect that one of their cop father's neighbours is a serial killer. This fact-based thriller resulted in Robbie getting an agent and they suggested she relocated to Melbourne.

Once in the big city, Robbie was hired to play Caitlin Brentford in an episode of the crime series, City Homicide (2007-11) and found herself opposite Liam Hemsworth in a couple of episodes of the children's show, The Elephant Princess (2008-11). However, roles were hard to come by and Robbie had to couch surf with friends while working at a branch of Subway.

From her early teens, Robbie had taken part-time jobs to help pay the bills. In addition to cleaning houses, she had also had a stint bartending. But she clearly enjoyed her time as a 'sandwich artist'. 'It's my favourite ever job,' she admitted in one interview, 'it was so much fun and I was really good at it. But now I can't go back to Subway because whenever somebody makes me a sandwich it's so frustrating. I'm always thinking, "You're doing such a bad job of this, you're making such a mess of my sandwich." I want to get round the other side of the counter and do it myself.'

At her agent's suggestion, Robbie called FremantleMedia on a daily basis about available roles in the long-running soap opera, Neighbours (1985-2022). On one occasion, the switchboard put her through to casting director Jan Russ, who was impressed when Robbie announced that she was in Melbourne to film a guest slot in City Homicide. Needing a 17 year-old for a forthcoming episode, Russ invited Robbie to the office for an audition. Thinking she had done so badly, she set off on a five-week snowboarding holiday in Canada. Two days into the trip, however, she got a call telling her she had the part and she started filming in June 2008.

The role of Donna Freedman was only supposed to be a fleeting one. But Robbie made such an impression that she remained on Ramsay Street for three years, receiving two Logie Award nominations. In addition to raising her profile, playing the garrulous bisexual also helped Robbie refine her craft. 'I'd sit in the makeup chair,' she recalled, 'and have 60 pages to memorise because my character spoke so much. She was the one that would walk in and be a whirlwind, bluh bluh bluh, la, la, la, talk, talk, talk, and run out again. We did an episode a day. In film terms, that's insane. It was amazing training.'

Midway through her 327-episode sojourn, Robbie found time for a backpacking tour of Europe. Indeed, she was very much for spreading her wings and informed the producers that she would not be renewing her contract. 'I wanted a big dramatic death,' she remembered, 'but they were like, "No, we want to keep it open. That way, when it doesn't work out in America, you can come back to your job here." So, Donna landed a scholarship to a fashion school in New York and Robbie was thus able to return for a cameo in the final episode of Neighbours, which aired on 28 July 2022. Much had happened in the interim.

The Reluctant Star

Robbie had been preparing for her move Stateside by working on American accents with Aussie voice coach Anna McCrossin-Owen. Her new dialects didn't help when she auditioned for the 2011 reboot of Charlie's Angels. But Robbie was chosen to play flight attendant Laura Cameron in Pan Am (2011), an ABC series set in 1950s New York that was designed to cash in on the success of Mad Men (2007-15). Signing a seven-year contract to play a runaway bride who enters the Jet Age, she adopted a Mid-American twang and drew positive notices. However, the ratings soon began to slide and, despite a change of writers, the show was cancelled after 14 episodes.

Undaunted, Robbie perfected an English accent to play Charlotte, the girl who wins the teenage heart of Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson), a Cornishman who discovers he can travel through time in Richard Curtis's romcom, About Time. It didn't prove to be one of Curtis's more popular outings, but Robbie was commended for playing an unobtainable dream girl and was able to draw on the experience when she auditioned for the role of Naomi Lapaglia in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (both 2013), which was based on the memoir of rogue trader Jordan Belfort.

Having submitted a tape with little expectation, Robbie was fortunate that it landed on the desk of casting director Ellen Lewis, who felt she fitted the description of 'the hottest blonde ever' in Terence Winter's screenplay. She invited Robbie to New York, where she was advised to 'Go down the street and buy the tightest dress and highest heels you can find. That is Naomi.' Finding herself auditioning in front of Scorsese, she impulsively slapped Leonardo DiCaprio during an argument scene and got the part.

In addition to nailing a Brooklyn accent, Robbie also had to appear naked in a seduction scene. She had misgivings, as she knew the images would appear all over the Internet. But she trusted Scorsese to reveal that sex was 'Naomi's power over Jordan and that's her only way of getting what she wants. That's her form of currency in a world of millionaires when she comes from nothing. The only way of creating a better life for herself and getting what she wants is the fact that she's aware of this sexual power she has over men, and especially over Jordan.'

Despite earning her a nomination for the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance and the Empire Award for Best Newcomer, Robbie's display as 'the Duchess of Bay Ridge' divided critics. One claimed, '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.' Another, however, opined that, 'She's committed to the chintz of the part. But it's like watching someone aim for Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas and Sharon Stone in Casino but land at Real Housewives.'

Being thrust into the limelight had its downside, however. As Robbie later recalled: 'Something was happening in those early stages and it was all pretty awful, and I remember saying to my mom, "I don't think I want to do this." And she just looked at me, completely straight-faced, and was like, "Darling, I think it's too late not to." That's when I realised the only way was forward.'

Next Stop, Clapham

Before the media storm broke, Robbie went to France to shoot Saul Dibb's adaptation of the second part of Irène Némirovsky's 2004 bestseller, Suite Française. 'I play a French peasant,' she joked later, 'and trust me, I looked revolting.' In fact, Celine Joseph contentiously sleeps with an occupying German soldier in the story that also features Michelle Williams, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Matthias Schoenaerts. However, Robbie spent less time with her co-stars than with crew members Josey McNamara and Tom Ackerley.

Having promised to keep in touch, Robbie looked up the pair when she came to London for the premiere of The Wolf of Wall Street in January 2014. As Paramount had booked her a plush hotel suite, she invited everyone round for an evening that would change her life. As she reminisced to one reporter, 'We were like: "Wouldn't it be funny if we all lived together?" Someone said: "But you don't live in London," and I said: "I don't live anywhere. I'll move." Three days later we signed a lease in Clapham. I didn't even see the place - I had to fly out to the Golden Globes three hours after we made the decision.'

Seven people crammed into the three-bedroom property, including Robbie's childhood friend, Sophia Kerr, who was now her assistant. A romance slowly developed with Ackerley and they married in 2016, with their housemates having to remind them that they would have to move out and set up their own home. However, Robbie, Ackerley, Ross, and McNamara had forged another bond by forming LuckyChap Entertainment, which appears to have been named following a drunken discussion about Charlie Chaplin.

'When I was trying to make my name as an actress, creative roles for women were limited,' Robbie revealed in recalling the origins of the company. 'I didn't want to pick up another script where I was the wife or the girlfriend - just a catalyst for the male story line. It was uninspiring.' She continued, 'Every time I pick up a script, I want to play the guy. Wouldn't it be so cool if people pick up scripts that we're making and always wanted to play the female role?'

Although intent on sponsoring more projects with a female focus, Robbie was also determined to revise her public image. Tired of being offered Naomi-like roles, 'I knew I needed to adjust people's perception of me right then.' Consequently, she lobbied for the part of brown-haired Appalachian farm girl Ann Burden in Craig Zobel's post-apocalyptic thriller, Z For Zachariah (2015), and landed her first lead after Amanda Seyfried had to withdraw. As Robbie told the producers, 'I'm actually much more like Ann than I am Naomi.'

Unfortunately, this isn't currently available on disc. But it got made, unlike Matthew Mark Carnahan's crime drama, Violent Talents, which would have teamed Robbie with Garrett Hedlund and Toby Kebbell. A scheduling clash around this time also cost her the chance to play Ralph Fiennes's daughter in Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash (2015), which reworked Jacques Deray's 1969 classic, La Piscine, in which the part had been played by the late Jane Birkin. Among the other projects with which Robbie was linked during this period - and which are available on high-quality DVD and Blu-ray from Cinema Paradiso - were Larry Brand's The Girl on the Train (2013) and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman (2014).

Robbie did get the chance to co-star with Will Smith in Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's comic caper, Focus, which required her to learn how to pick pockets as Jess Barrett, a grifter who hooks up with con man Nicky Spurgeon in the hope of becoming a femme fatale. Rolling Stone enthused 'Robbie is wow and then some,' but she made more headlines with her cameo in Adam McKay's The Big Short (both 2015), which required her to break the fourth wall and deliver a detailed explanation of subprime mortgages while in the bath.

Now the face of Calvin Klein's new fragrance, Deep Euphoria, Robbie was nominated alongside Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Miles Teller, and Shailene Woodley for the Rising Star Award at the British Academy Film Awards. They all lost out, however, to Jack O'Connell, who had just headlined Yann Demange's '71 and Angelina Jolie's Unbroken (both 2014). But Robbie had clearly impressed Ficarra and Requa, who cast her as BBC war correspondent Tanya Vanderpoel in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, an adaptation of Kim Barker's The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan that co-starred Tina Fey as Barker and Martin Freeman as tipsy Scottish freelance photographer, Iain MacKelpie.

Unfortunately, the film was coolly received. As was David Yates's The Legend of Tarzan (2016), in which Robbie played Jane Porter opposite Alexander Skarsgård's John Clayton III, 5th Earl of Greystoke. She opted not to see how Maureen O'Sullivan had played the role opposite Johnny Weissmuller in some of the 12 Tarzans made at MGM between 1932-48 (type his name into the Cinema Paradiso searchline for details) or how Andie MacDowell had fared alongside Christopher Lambert in Hugh Hudson's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984). As the picture was largely made in London in front of green screens, however, it allowed Robbie to spend some time in Clapham with Ackerley, who was acting as third assistant director on Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015).

Already applying the LuckyChap agenda to roles for hire, Robbie refused to lose weight for the project or play Jane as a damsel in distress. She carried this mindset into her first blockbuster. Amidst rumours that she had been considered for the role of Sue Storm (aka The Invisible Woman) in Josh Trank's Marvel reboot, Fantastic Four (2015) - a part that went to Kate Mara - Robbie plumped for the DC Universe by signing up to become the first person to portray Dr Harleen Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn) in a live-action production when she joined the cast of David Ayer's Suicide Squad (2016).

Completing the ensemble were Will Smith (Floyd Lawton/Deadshot), Jared Leto (The Joker), Jay Hernandez (Chato Santana/El Diablo), Cara Delevingne (Dr June Moore/Enchantress), Karen Fukuhara (Tatsu Yamashiro/Katana), Jai Courtney (Digger Harkness/Captain Boomerang), Adam Beach (Christopher Weiss/Slipknot), and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Waylon Jones/Killer Croc), while Ben Affleck and Ezra Miller respectively cameo'd as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Barry Allen/The Flash. Although unfamiliar with the DC Comics, Robbie threw herself into the six-month preparation for a role that required her to do many of her own stunts. Along with taking up boxing and gymnastics, she also learned how to perform aerial silk acrobatics and hold her breath underwater for five minutes.

The skills would come in handy in the near future, as the picture raked in global revenues of $746.8 million, in spite of some negative reviews. Robbie was largely immune from criticism, however, and won Favourite Action Movie Actress at the People's Choice Awards, as well as Best Actress in an Action Movie at the Critics' Choice Movie Awards. In October 2016, Robbie hosted the premiere of the 42nd season of Saturday Night Live and was acclaimed for her impersonation of Ivanka Trump.

The following month, the LuckyChap quartet left London and opened a new office in Los Angeles. Until now, Robbie had kept her thoughts on the patriarchal nature of Hollywood to herself. 'I just assumed that everyone knew stuff that I didn't know, so therefore I shouldn't have an opinion,' she reflected in one profile. 'LA is literally the land of "fake it 'til you make it". Everyone's freaking out and winging it and pretending they've totally got it under control, and really they probably don't. And then I thought, well, why not just give (producing) a try?'

Promising Young Woman

In 2017, Robbie reunited with Domhnall Gleeson on Simon Curtis's Goodbye Christopher Robin, which explored the inter-war relationship between Winnie-the-Pooh creator A.A. Milne, his wife Daphne, and their young son's nanny, Olive Rand (Kelly MacDonald). The reviews were polite, with the consensus favouring MacDonald's homely nanny to Robbie's absentee mother. However, there were few dissenting voices for LuckyChap's first release.

Robbie had no idea who Tonya Harding was when she first read Steven Rogers's screenplay for I, Tonya (2017). In fairness, she had been four years old when the ice-skating rivalry between Harding and Nancy Kerrigan took a violent turn prior to the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. This was the same age that Harding had been she was forced to take up skating by demanding mother, LaVona Golden. However, Robbie devoted hours to honing her skating technique with choreographer Sarah Kawahara and met Harding and studied interview footage to develop a Pacific Northwest for her scenes with Allison Janney as LaVona and Sebastian Stan as bungling husband, Jim Gillhooly.

Janney would win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, while Robbie was nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the Critics' Choice Movie Awards. As Angelica Jade Bastién perceptively wrote later, 'Robbie is able to acknowledge that Tonya's hard-bitten nature is rooted in a place of hurt, which is apparent in every faltering smile and piercing grace. She moves like a wounded animal, operating best when she veers toward flashes of violence, verbal or otherwise.' The Wall Street Journal proved similarly apposite: 'Through the unlikely avatar of Harding, she broadcast the qualities that have since defined a quintessential Robbie role: extreme physicality, an overt defiance of cliché and a willingness to subsume herself entirely in a character.'

Moreover, Robbie also received her first credit as a producer and earned the admiration of director Craig Gillespie and the entire cast and crew for the hours she put into every aspect of a picture that took a radical approach to class, femininity, and physical and psychological abuse. In recognition of her breakthrough as both a performer and an executive, Time magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World and Martin Scorsese wrote the following citation:-

'Like no one else - that's what Margot Robbie's like. You're asked this question a lot about actors - "What's she like?" - and I've never been able to give an answer I'm happy with. With Margot, you can recall some classic precedents: the comedic genius of Carole Lombard, for her all-bets-off feistiness; Joan Crawford, for her grounded, hardscrabble toughness; Ida Lupino, for her emotional daring. Margot has all this in addition to a unique audacity that surprises and challenges and just burns like a brand into every character she plays. She clinched her part in The Wolf of Wall Street during our first meeting - by hauling off and giving Leonardo DiCaprio a thunderclap of a slap on the face, an improvisation that stunned us all. This is not a complete answer to the perennial question, but it's a start. Margot is stunning in all she is and all she does, and she will astonish us forever.'

In Hollywood terms, Robbie was now a 'double threat', as LuckyChap started to develop films and shows that were not purely acting vehicles, as is the case with many actors who launch their own production companies. In addition to Kat Denning's Hulu series Dollface (2019-22), the company also reworked Stephanie Land's memoir for Emmy-nominated Margaret Qualley's Netflix mini-series, Maid (2021), and acquired the rights to Booker Prize nominee Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation. LuckyChap also backed Emerald Fennell's directorial debut, Promising Young Woman (2020), a darkly comic rape revenge story that earned Fennell the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Carey Mulligan was also nominated for Best Actress, while Robbie and Ackerley were among the co-producers on the ticket for the Best Picture nomination.

Robbie is also behind Fennell's sophomore outing, Saltburn, which will go on general release in the UK after opening the 67th BFI London Film Festival in October. What's more, Robbie and screenwriter Christina Hodson have created the Lucky Exports Pitch Programme, which is open to six women screenwriters, four of them women of colour, to develop pitches with Hodson and LuckyChap.

Meanwhile, Robbie had other tasks to attend to. She narrated Will Gluck's Beatrix Potter adaptation, Peter Rabbit (2018), to which she also contributed the voice of Flopsy Rabbit. Indeed, she enjoyed the experience so much that she reprised the role in the short, Flopsy Turvy (2018), and alongside James Corden, Rose Byrne, and Domhnall Gleeson in Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway (2021). Following a Skype cameo in Crispian Mills's Slaughterhouse Rulez, as teacher Simon Pegg's ex-girlfriend, Audrey (who has gone to Sudan to minister to sick children), Robbie encountered Pegg again in Vaughan Stein's underrated neo-noir thriller, Terminal (both 2018), in which a teacher (Pegg), three hitmen (Nick Moran, Dexter Fletcher, and Max Irons), and a mysterious man of many disguises (Mike Myers) underestimate Annie, a waitress with a dark secret or two.

Completing a busy year, Robbie played Elizabeth I opposite Saoirse Ronan as her Tudor cousin in Josie Rourke's Mary Queen of Scots (2018). Daunted by performances by the likes of Flora Robson ( Fire Over England, 1937), Bette Davis (The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, 1939 & The Virgin Queen, 1955), Glenda Jackson (Elizabeth R & Mary, Queen of Scots, both 1971), Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love, 1998), and Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth, 1998 & Elizabeth: The Golden Age, 2007), Robbie originally turned down the role. But she relished the challenge of undergoing three hours in make-up each morning for the application of the smallpox scars that had marked Elizabeth's face since 1562. Critics poked holes in the dialogue and the script's historical inaccuracies and liberties, including a wholly fictitious meeting between the two queens. But Robbie and Ronan were lauded for their intensity, with the former being nominated for both a BAFTA and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress.

It was back to LuckyChap business with Miles Joris-Peyrafitte's Dreamlan, a drama set in Dust Bowl Texas during the 1930s, in which Eugene Evans (Finn Cole) hides bank-robbing fugitive Allison Wells (Robbie) from his lawman stepfather. The reviews were lukewarm, but Robbie again received honourable mentions. She also managed to skirt the controversy surrounding her casting as Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (both 2019), which is the subject of one of Cinema Paradiso's What to Watch Next items.

Robbie had written to Tarantino in the hope of working with him and had been delighted to be cast alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, as 1960s actor Rick Dalton and his stand-in, Cliff Booth. Feeling enormous responsibility to do justice to the murdered star, she met members of Tate's family, watched all of her films, and read her widowed husband's autobiography, Roman By Polanski (1984). Not everyone was convinced by Tarantino's rethinking of the notorious Tate-LaBianca Murders, but all agreed that Robbie stole the show as Tate settled down in the darkness at the Fox Bruin Theater to watch herself in Phil Karlson's The Wrecking Crew (1968).

There was more disquiet about tinkering with the facts in Jay Roach's Bombshell (2019), a treatise on the toxic behaviour of Fox News executive Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) that saw Robbie cast as the composite character Kayla Pospisil alongside Charlize Theron's Megyn Kelly and Nicole Kidman's Gretchen Carlson. Nevertheless, she was nominated for Best Supporting BAFTAs for Bombshell and Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, as well as being recognised in the same category for the former at the Oscars, the Golden Globes, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Mover, Shaker, Superstar

As soon as she had finished Suicide Squad, Robbie had contacted Warners about doing an action film with a sizeable female presence behind and in front of the camera. The result was Birds of Prey (2020), which was written by Christina Hodson and directed by Cathy Yan so that Robbie could reprise the role of Harley Quinn alongside Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Helena Bertinelli/The Huntress and Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Dinah Lance/Black Canary. The change of tone was evident in the Harley Quinn costume, which designer Erin Benach made 'definitely less male gaze-y' as per Robbie's instructions. The fanboy coterie wasn't convinced by the subtle emphasis on gender status and the politics of desire. But Angelica Jade Bastién was markedly more taken by what she called 'a beautiful fantasy for women who choose not to play by the rules'. The Vulture article continued, 'What makes Harley Quinn so thrilling is that she provides another option - one where the unruly woman is allowed to cut loose and triumph over the emblems of misogyny in her life.'

By all accounts, the $205 million worldwide gross failed to recoup the budget, but Robbie and her cohorts had proved that women could do superhero movies on their own terms. According to Hodson, 'Her superpower and the thing that makes her a once-in-a-generation talent is that she can do everything. If you watch Margot learn a new skill, it's pretty terrifying. When we did stunts for Birds of Prey, the stunt teams would show something to her once. She tries it once, and by the second time, she's better than them.'

And, just to prove that she had the blessing of DC Comics after being dual-nominated at the People's Choice Awards, Robbie was invited back to play Harley Quinn in James Gunn's reboot, The Suicide Squad (2021). Not even Hollywood's newest game-changer could swing every deal, however, as the 'female led' Pirates of the Caribbean venture that she had been developing with Disney since 2020 failed to get a green light.

One can only feel that this is the House of Mouse's loss, as Robbie continued to dare and dazzle. David O. Russell recognised the value of having her as part of his all-star ensemble in Amsterdam (2020), as Valerie Voze, a nurse from a wealthy family who helps doctor Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) and lawyer Harold Woodman (John David Washington) investigate the 1933 murder of their Great War commander. Over-hastily dismissed by critics, this deserves to find an audience and that's precisely why Cinema Paradiso exists.

Robbie stayed in the inter-war years for her next assignment, as she played Nellie LaRoy in Babylon (2022), Damien Chazelle's snapshot of Hollywood on the cusp of the sound era. The character was based on Clara Bow, the original 'It Girl', whose 46 silent pictures had included William A. Wellman's Wings (1927), which won the inaugural Academy Award for Best Picture. While shooting the party sequence, Robbie had to dance for eight hours over two days, while a fight scene with Diego Calva (which wound up being cut) resulted in her breaking a window and him getting bruised ribs. He had no hard feelings, however, as he praised his co-star: 'She just gave everything she had. Everything's raw. She's a fearless actress.'

In addition to watching Bow's movies and researching her traumatic childhood, Robbie also tried out 31 different accents before hitting upon the right one. She also resorted to her trusted method of assigning animal traits in order to attain a character's essence. Tonya Harding had been a pit bull in her everyday life and a mustang on the ice, but Nellie was a combination of an octopus and a honey badger, as she 'could be both fluid and transformative' while also being 'ready for a fight - constantly'.

Robbie enjoyed the role because she is able to detach herself from the action on set. 'I don't feel embarrassed when it's Nellie doing something,' she explained. 'I'd feel embarrassed if it was me, but it's all her.' Nevertheless, Robbie had to concede, 'It was the most physically and emotionally draining character I've ever played, by a country mile. She demands so much of you that she left me in pieces.' But she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress and was able to joke when it comes to demanding roles, 'I'm a masochist.' Yet, she continued, 'I can always find a fifth gear.'

Following a single scene cameo in Wes Anderson's Asteroid City, however, Robbie needed a little more than animal insight in taking on the part that has sent her career into the stratosphere. Although she briefly considered a flamingo, the natural world didn't provide useful entrée into playing Stereotypical Barbie in Greta Gerwig's Barbie (both 2023). As Robbie wrestled with getting a handle on a role she had inherited after it had been turned down by Gal Gadot, Gerwig suggested listening to an episode of a podcast entitled This American Life, which centred on a woman who struggled to be introspective. 'You know how you have a voice in your head all the time,' Robbie explained in an interview. 'This woman, she doesn't have that voice in her head,' and that was her way into the psyche of Mattel's bestselling doll.

It says much for Robbie's standing in Tinseltown that Barbie even got made. Packages involving Anne Hathaway and Amy Schumer had failed to attract sufficient funding. But, once LuckyChap came aboard, things started to fall into place. Robbie asked Greta Gerwig and partner Noah Baumbach to put a subversive spin on the storyline and they concocted what the New York Times called 'a feminist manifesto wrapped in hot pink bubble gum'.

Taking their inspiration from such exquisitely designed musicals as Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes (1948) and Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), Gerwig was able to contrast the vibrant hues of Barbieland with the quotidian colours of California with the help of set designers Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer, costumier Jacqueline Durran, and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who devised a special palette that Gerwig dubbed 'Techni-Barbie'.

With Issa Rae, Hari Nef, Emma Mackey, Dua Lipa, Sharon Rooney, Ana Cruz Kayne, Alexandra Shipp, and Kate McKinnon playing variations on Barbie and Ryan Gosling signing up for Beach Ken, the ensemble was treated by Gerwig to a pre-shoot slumber party at Claridge's Hotel in London. The Kens were only allowed to visit, so Gosling sent a singing telegram in the form of an elderly kilted Scotsman, who played the bagpipes and recited a speech from Mel Gibson's Braveheart (1995). In order to maintain the aesthetic focus during the production, Sunday morning screenings were held at the Electric Cinema in Notting Hill, which became known as the 'movie church'.

From the outset, Robbie was determined to confound expectations. As she told the Hollywood Reporter, 'our goal is to be like, "Whatever you're thinking, we're going to give you something totally different - the thing you didn't know you wanted."' According to Variety, Robbie banked $12.5 million for her performance. But, with Gerwig becoming the first woman director to gross of over $1 billion, it feels like money well spent.

Of course, there has been plenty of sniping since Robbie started to rewrite the Hollywood playbook. Jim Carrey joked when he appeared with her on The Graham Norton Show, 'I'm so excited for you. It's incredible that you've got as far as you have with your obvious physical disadvantages.' In spite of the #MeToo campaign, sexism is still rife in show business and Anne Helen Petersen is right to note in an excellent article for BuzzFeed News that Robbie is to be celebrated because 'her slate is filled with projects - for herself and others - that are different, and challenging, and bringing other people into positions of power from which women like her have usually been excluded'.

She also remains willing to appear in shorts like Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman's Australian Psycho (2016) and Steve Rogers's Tourism Australia: Dundee - The Son of a Legend Returns Home (2018), which also features Chris Hemsworth, Russell Crowe, Isla Fisher, Hugh Jackman, and Paul Hogan. Also check out stuntwoman Zoe Bell's Boss Bitch Fight Challenge (2020), which was made during the Covid-19 pandemic and features five minutes of virtual mayhem, as Robbie lines up for some playful pugnacity alongside Cameron Diaz, Juliette Lewis, Halle Berry, Scarlett Johansson, Drew Barrymore, Rosie Perez, Rosario Dawson, Daryl Hannah, Zoe Saldana, Florence Pugh, Lucy Lawless, and Thandiwe Newton.

Since the world returned to something approaching normality, Robbie and Ackerley have fulfilled a dream by riding on the Orient Express from London to Venice via Paris. 'I was watching the Sidney Lumet version of Murder on the Orient Express while I was on board,' she told one reporter, 'just because I'm a loser, and I was, like, checking the background of every shot.' But work remains a priority. She hopes to collaborate one day with Paul Thomas Anderson, Bong Joon-ho, and Céline Sciamma. First, she has another Harley Quinn adventure on the cards and will reunite with Ryan Gosling on a prequel to the Ocean's franchise, which she will also produce for LuckyChap. We're prepared to guess there may well be a Barbie sequel, too. But nothing should be taken for granted where Margot Robbie's concerned.