Margot Robbie stuns in Vogue Australia, reveals calculated plan to work with Quentin Tarantino
Margot Robbie’s meteoric rise from Neighbours actor to Hollywood A-lister in just a few years has been expertly calculated.
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Vogue Australia today revealed a first look at their September covers featuring Aussie-born Hollywood superstar Margot Robbie.
That’s right, covers — Robbie appears acrossed four collectable covers of the September issue, in a stunning shoot photographed by Mario Sorrenti and styled by Vogue Australia fashion director Christine Centenera.
The Vogue cover coup coincides with another Hollywood landmark for Robbie: The release of blockbuster film Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood. Her starring role in what director Quentin Tarantino says will be his last film is a huge deal for Robbie, who reveals she hatched an audacious plan to work with the director before his retirement.
Inside Vogue Australia, Robbie and Tarantino sit down for a wide-ranging chat. The pair discuss her meteoric rise to fame, with Tarantino quizzing the former Neighbours star, 29, about her Aussie origins and making the leap to America.
“I made the decision and started saving money and learning the American dialect,” Robbie tells Tarantino.
“You’ve met me with my Australian accent now, but my Australian accent as it was then was very, very Australian … I am a Queenslander, and my accent was so Australian that Neighbours hired a dialect coach to make me sound less Australian,” she reveals.
“So that was all part of the process of moving to America. Before that the idea of being in Hollywood, I did think you had to be born into it or had to know someone in the industry.”
Tarantino explains why he cast Robbie in the role of Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood, telling her there was “no number two” — Robbie was the only choice to play the doomed real-life character.
Bizarrely, at the same time Tarantino was finishing the script and envisioning Robbie for the role, she reached out to him.
“It was something like within two weeks of me finishing the script, having it typed up, and out of the blue I get a letter sent to my house and it’s from you. I’m like: ‘What?!’ One minute I’m thinking about you and then I get this letter. In it you expressed that you’ve been a fan of my work for a long time … and you say: ‘I just want you to know if there’s something you’d like me for, just let me know.’ It was damn near romantic the way the letter was written because it was so great. It was exactly what I wanted to hear. I couldn’t believe the happenstance of it all. Within a week we got together and were talking,” Tarantino recalls.
When asked what prompted her to write the letter, Robbie delivers an anecdote that goes some way to explaining how she’s managed to achieve so much in Hollywood in just a few short years.
“I had wanted to write the letter for years and years and years. Because I’d heard you were going to do 10 movies and I couldn’t bear the thought I would miss the boat and never see what one of your film sets was like: I needed to figure out a way to get on to set,” she says.
“I knew I wasn’t in that position yet and each time something exciting in my career would happen to put me on the map a little more, I thought: ‘Okay, I feel like I’m getting more established and maybe now’s the time.’ It wasn’t until we did I, Tonya that I thought: ‘Now I’m happy with my acting. I feel like I’ve reached the stage where this body of work will show people what I can do as an actor. Now I’m ready to chat with Quentin Tarantino and write that letter.’”
Robbie says she agonised over every aspect of the letter — “the paper, the pen, how I was going to write it” — and wasn’t even sure if Tarantino would ever receive or read it. She sent it anyway.
“A couple of weeks later I remember getting the phone call saying: ‘Quentin got your letter and he’d really like to meet up.’ I didn’t want to get ahead of myself, but then when we sat down — I remember you ordered an iced tea with a sweetener — I felt like it was the most exciting meeting I’ll ever take in my life.”
The Vogue Australia September issue is on sale Monday 26 August. For the full cover shoot and interview head to vogue.com.au.
Originally published as Margot Robbie stuns in Vogue Australia, reveals calculated plan to work with Quentin Tarantino
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