For much of her life, Margot Robbie has been addicted to fear — to the electric adrenaline that surges through her when she is sure she can’t do something, but forces herself to try regardless.
“I love feeling terrified, I love it when I think I can’t pull it off this time,” she says. It is this compulsion that made her — then a 23-year-old unknown — unexpectedly slap Leonardo DiCaprio in the face during her screen test for Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street (the slap got her the job).
It is this determination to push it just a bit too far that made her insist on doing most of her own stunts when she stole the show as Suicide Squad’s baseball bat-wielding psycho with a heart, Harley Quinn.
Where I grew up, acting wasn’t a job you could do — I never met anyone who had so much as made a cup of coffee on a film set
It is this refusal to stay within the limits of what might be expected from a “toothpaste model” (her words) that led her to set up a production company with her now husband and two best friends when she was 24, and to produce and star in I, Tonya.
“People said, ‘That will never get made’,” she says of her film about the controversial, tenacious, domestically abused US Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding. “It gets to me when people say that. So I was like, ‘Let’s give it a go’.”
I, Tonya was a critical success. Allison Janney won an Oscar for her portrayal of Harding’s ruthless mother and Robbie was nominated for an Oscar (and a Golden Globe) for her interpretation of the DIY diamanté skater Harding.
The film was also a financial success — costing about $14 million to make and grossing $62 million. Not bad for its producer and lead actor.
Robbie, who grew up near the Gold Coast, says: “No one thought I would be an actress because where I grew up, it wasn’t a job you could do — I never met anyone who had so much as made a cup of coffee on a film set.”
Her parents divorced when she was young and her mother, a physiotherapist, raised Robbie and her three siblings single-handed.
“She is such a saint; she is amazing, I love her. She held it together and always put everyone else first,” she says.
It was a chaotic, crowded and noisy childhood.
“We weren’t easy kids, we didn’t make it easy for Mum.”
Not least Robbie, who was determined to assert her independence from a young age.
“When I was five I was watching my mum put spread on my sandwich for school and I was saying, ‘It’s not going to the edges’, and she was like, ‘If I am not doing it right, do it yourself’,” she says.
“So I started making my own lunch from five years old. If I wanted something a certain way, I just did it myself. Mum says that sums me up.
“I’m still trying to make it up to her.” (One of the first things Robbie did once her career took off was to pay off her mother’s mortgage.)
When Robbie was 17 she moved to Melbourne, and when she wasn’t working in Subway she was badgering the production team on Neighbours.
Her persistence paid off and in 2008 she won the part of Donna Freedman, but all the while she was seeing a dialect coach to perfect her American accent so she could make the move to the US.
Again, determination won out. Robbie’s second Hollywood film role was opposite DiCaprio in The Wolf Of Wall Street.
Robbie says she does not regret any of the parts she has played, but she is becoming more aware of the social impact of her roles.
“It is a weird thing, having a profile,” she says, becoming quiet for the first (and only) time during our conversation.
“It is hard because I would never have got to this position if I was trying to censor everything I did. I would never have an impact on anyone if I played perfect characters.”
She does have some compelling roles coming up: as a pox-ridden Elizabeth I in Josie Rourke’s Mary Queen of Scots with Saoirse Ronan; and as Sharon Tate, the actor who was murdered by Charles Manson’s followers, in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, with Brad Pitt and DiCaprio.
These are substantial, high-profile roles that explore the power and vulnerability of women “that seems to be the contradiction that I am most attracted to”, she says.
Films she is developing include Marion, a feminist retelling of the Robin Hood story, and an untitled Birds Of Prey film for which she is reprising her role as Harley Quinn, but this time uniting a posse of DC Comics’ deranged heroines.
“If I was going to play Harley again, I wanted it to be in the kind of movie I wanted to see. So it’s about a girl gang,” she says. It is due to start filming early next year.
Robbie has been vocal in the #MeToo movement. Last year she was asked to give a speech at a Hollywood event celebrating women and film; she prepared by asking all her female crew member friends about their experiences in the industry, creating a collective narrative that was more powerful than one person’s experience.
“Of course I knew the problem existed,” she says. “I just hadn’t viewed it as a problem we were allowed to be angry about. Because no one spoke about it, no one said, ‘I am not putting up with this any more.’
“It wasn’t called a problem, it was called a fact of life. That is such a terrible mindset. If we just accept things like sexual harassment as a fact of life, it doesn’t get fixed.”
This collective approach is one that comes naturally to Robbie. “I never do anything on my own. I don’t see the purpose of doing anything if I don’t do it with my friends. I go mental when I am on my own; my thoughts are so loud it drives me insane,” she says.
On set Robbie says she is never found in her trailer, but always chatting to cast and crew.
She made such good friends with the crew on the set of Suite Française in 2013 that a group of them decided to rent together in Clapham, London, squeezing seven people into a four-bedroom flat.
“Those were the best days of my life,” she says of the nights spent in Clapham’s bars, and the days on the Common with a football and booze.
One of those flatmates was assistant director Tom Ackerley, who she married in 2016, wearing her mother’s old wedding dress.
“It was lovely, just chilled, you didn’t have to wear shoes.”
Her hen’s night at a friend’s house, however, was “absolute carnage”. There were at least 45 women, including Robbie’s gang of school friends. Her Neighbours friends were also invited, as were her British gang. “They are a rowdy bunch, too, and the combination was explosive,” she says.
Robbie is a big fan of fancy dress so her friends dressed her up in various wigs and massive sunglasses for the surprise finale. “They hired a Harry Potter-themed stripper for me; he had all the Harry Potter phrases and innuendos. I was so touched, it was really such a thoughtful thing to do.”
Robbie has been reading the Harry Potter books on a loop since she was eight.
“Right now I am on the fifth book,” she says. “I know what’s coming next when I turn the page. I can’t meditate and this is what I have to do to fall asleep. If I read something new before I go to bed, my brain goes 1000 miles an hour. Reading Harry Potter makes me happy and calms me. I read for about an hour to two hours every night.”
She also loves magic tricks and has spent many an evening at Magic Castle nightclub in Los Angeles, where she and Ackerley have moved. “They always call me up on to the stage because I am always the one in the audience screaming.”
Otherwise, she’s on the Warner Bros lot, where her production company is based, but despite the many projects she has in development, the thing that is getting her most fired up right now is her desire to do theatre.
“I didn’t go to drama school and I didn’t go to university. I just really want to do theatre. The idea of doing it absolutely terrifies me, and I love that. You can’t wait for it, you have to make it happen,” she says.
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