'She's the real deal': Why everyone loves Oscar nominee Margot Robbie

The first time director Jay Roach met Margot Robbie to talk about her role in Bombshell – for which she is a best supporting actress nominee at Monday's Oscars – she came prepared.

"She had colour-coded every scene, had very carefully handwritten notes on every line. 'What's this mean, why am I doing this?' They were excellent questions," says Roach.

They were so good, in fact, that he and screenwriter Charles Randolph felt compelled to try to answer them. And where the motivations or actions of Kayla Pospisil, the fictional character Robbie plays in the film about the real-life downfall of former Fox News chief Roger Ailes, couldn't be explained, they rewrote.

Roach admits he hadn't expected such "nerdy" preparation from the Dalby-born, Gold Coast-raised Robbie, and he certainly wasn't expecting her to take it as far as she did. "She told me she had a whole future for Kayla in mind," he says. "She had mapped out about her sexuality, her career, into her 60s. I mean that's just nerdy, and I admired it so much."

There's always been a touch of the swot about Robbie, says Susan Bower, who was executive producer of Neighbours when the now-29-year-old got her break playing Donna Freedman from 2008 to 2011.

"From the get-go she was a professional with enormous drive, ambition with generosity, which is almost an oxymoron," says Bower. "She works hard. She studies. She took classes whenever she wasn't working on set.

"In her production break she went to America and got herself an agent and a lawyer, with the support of her agent here, and she did voice coaching for accents. She was amazing. And all the time she was incredibly professional and gave her all to the character."

But no amount of hard work would have counted had she not also had ability, and from the outset it was obvious she was a bit special.

Bower recalls a scene, filmed late one night, where Donna learned her love interest had died in a motorcycle accident. "And every time the take was shot, the tear would fall from her eye at the exact word where the tears were needed. I thought, 'This girl has got it'."

Margot Robbie has begun to forge a dual career as A-list star and producer.

Rick Maier, head of drama at Network 10, could see it immediately. "Margot's screen test was a no-brainer," he says. "You didn't need to be a genius to see the potential, and we all know what happened next.

"The senior cast of Neighbours, I know, played a big part in Margot's development, but really there was never any doubt. We were very lucky to have her."

As an actor, it seems Hollywood largely agrees. This is her second Oscar nomination, following her best actress nod for I, Tonya two years ago (she lost to Frances McDormand for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri). In the six years since she burst onto the radar with her performance as Leonardo DiCaprio's wife in The Wolf of Wall Street, she has been relentlessly busy, straddling smart mid-market fare such as The Big Short, Goodbye Christopher Robin and Mary Queen of Scots and blockbuster films like Suicide Squad and its spin-off Birds of Prey.

But it's this latter film, which opened on Thursday, that offers the real key to the scale of Robbie's ascent, and the determination behind it. She not only stars in the film as Harley Quinn, deranged former girlfriend of The Joker, she also produced it. In fact, the whole thing – which could potentially spawn a mini-franchise of its own (imdb.com lists another three Harley films in development) – was her idea.

"I pitched it while I was working on Suicide Squad," she told The Project recently. "I identified a gap in the market; female ensemble action films just weren't really being made. I felt like I was hungry for it, and maybe other audience members would be too."

As Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey, a film she produced and originated.Credit: Warner Bros

Robbie cut her producing teeth with I, Tonya, but has barely taken a breath since. Her LuckyChap Entertainment shingle now has more than 20 projects in various stages of development.

With some actors, the producer credit is little more than a flashy accessory, but for Robbie it's about making sure she's in control of the sorts of roles that are being created, and that she gets to play.

Robbie says she took inspiration from watching Charlize Theron perform the dual role of actor and producer on Bombshell.

"Getting to see it first-hand, it's just so wicked, it's so cool, and I'm so happy because she's a real producer," she says. "It is not a vanity title. She is there, she is on set on days when she doesn't need to be on set, on days when she is not working."

But the same could be – and has been – said of Robbie. On Birds of Prey, notes Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays Huntress, the Australian "had a hand in every department. She was so detail-oriented in her mind and so aware of everything that was going on".

At the same time, she adds, "she did it in a way that never seemed overpowering, never seemed like she was trying to control anyone or anything".

Rosie Perez, who plays the police officer Montoya, agrees. "Margot as a boss was beyond impressive," she says. "She never made you feel like, 'I'm the boss and that's it'. She was always accessible.

"She always had an answer, even if it was, 'I don't know yet, I will find that out for you'. And she would come back with the answer that you needed."

Robbie, who is nominated for an acting Oscar at Monday's ceremony, is also "beyond impressive" as a boss, says her Birds of Prey co-star Rosie Perez.Credit: AP

Of course, some of this you might dismiss as the hyperbole of movie people on the promotional trail with a vested interest in bigging up their boss. But the assessment of Robbie as hard-working, generous and smart is so consistent that it's impossible to dismiss.

Her Instagram feed is instructive in this respect too. Yes, it's full of the usual glamour shots, but look at the bio. It's a link to a fundraising page for the Australian Red Cross, where her 18.5 million followers are directed with an imprecation to give generously. It's a sponsored post in reverse.

"She's the real deal," says Susan Bower, her old boss on Neighbours. "I'm so happy to be able to say that I worked with Margot."

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