FROM Neighbours ingénue to Wall Street siren — and now a feminist version of Jane in The Legend Of Tarzan — Aussie actress Margot Robbie refuses to be typecast.
LONG before Margot Robbie could read, let alone act, it was clear she was going to stand out from the crowd. As a toddler, she had a mind of her own and an unusually gregarious personality.
According to Robbie herself, her mother would often say: “You were the most fiercely independent toddler I’ve ever seen. I could barely put a nappy on you as you had to do everything yourself!”
That feisty spirit is in evidence as I chat to the 25-year-old in a suite at The Beverly Hills Hotel, where we are meeting to discuss her latest film, The Legend Of Tarzan.
All smiles and enthusiasm, Robbie bounds over to the sofa, leaps onto the cushions and wraps her arms around her knees.
When I ask about her outfit, she springs back up and treats me to an impromptu fashion show. She’s wearing a long-sleeved Trademark top and actually undoes the zipper of her A.L.C. high-waisted, wide-legged trousers so I can check out the label.
“I’m practically getting undressed for you,” she laughs, before twirling around the room, wavy blonde hair bouncing off her shoulders.
Naturally vivacious, Robbie’s high spirits can also be attributed to the current state of her career – she’s had an extraordinary ascent from Neighbours girl-next-door to bona fide movie star.
Since her stunning breakthrough role in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street in 2013, Robbie has been hailed as one of Hollywood’s most exciting new talents. And now she has two blockbusters being released in as many months to support the тιтle.
But if you think the “Margot Robbie Phenomenon” has happened in the blink of an eye, she wants to set the record straight.
“We were absolutely nuts and would always be fighting. Mum did an amazing job wrangling all of us.”
“Everyone is always like, ‘You are an overnight sensation.’ But next year I will have been doing this professionally for 10 years,” she says.
“There is so much hard work involved. Acting means investing time; whatever money I made early on, I spent on acting courses and dialect coaches.”
Still, her story does sound like the stuff of far-fetched dreams for a “normal” girl from the Gold Coast.
Along with three siblings, Robbie was raised by her single mother, physiotherapist Sarie Kessler, in a “chaotic” family with zero show-business connections.
“We were not well-behaved children,” smiles Robbie, referring to older brother Lachlan, younger brother Cameron and big sister Anya.
“We were absolutely nuts and would always be fighting. Mum did an amazing job wrangling all of us.”
Robbie goes on to paint a picture of a warm, inviting family home (she recently delighted her mum by paying off the entire mortgage on her Southport property).
“We were one of those families whose doors were always open and there was constantly someone walking in and out,” she says.
“It was a mad house. There were tons of people in a small place and it was so noisy and loud. I can’t sleep in quiet H๏τel rooms now because it’s ᴅᴇᴀᴅ silent and so weird.”
In contrast to the bustle of the Robbie household, much of the actor’s childhood was spent at her maternal grandparents’ farm in Queensland’s Currumbin Valley.
“I thought it was only something you could do if you were American. Making films was just a distant ‘thing’, off in another world called Hollywood.”
“Our driveway was a kilometre long and there were heaps of animals,” she says, her eyes lighting up.
“I grew up hunting wild boars, because you have to hunt the pests that are damaging the farms… I am very outdoorsy; I actually feel more at home outdoors than I do indoors.”
An academic child, Robbie displayed an interest in drama early on. She liked “doing plays and magic shows”, but says she never really considered performing professionally.
“It is really hard to think about acting when you have never met someone who does that for a job,” she says.
“I thought it was only something you could do if you were American. Making films was just a distant ‘thing’, off in another world called Hollywood.”
Like any other teenager, Robbie spent her high-school years in various part-time jobs.
She worked at Subway, at a surf store and at a Burleigh Heads restaurant called Mermaids,
“Because my mum’s boyfriend at the time owned it,” she laughs.
“I had so many jobs because you are always connected to someone on the Gold Coast.”
Her entrée into acting happened serendipitously, halfway through Year 12, when her friend was making a low-budget film.
“They needed a girl and he said, ‘Come and audition.’”
Robbie got the part, went on to appear in a series of unpaid commercials and “one thing led to another”.
She signed with an agency and juggled acting with her final year at Somerset College in Mudgeeraba (“I always left homework till the last minute, so I’d do all-nighters, back to back”).
Then, Robbie landed her first TV job after cold-calling the casting agent of Neighbours.
A meeting led to an audition and eventually the role of free-spirited Donna Freedman.
“It was the craziest thing. I graduated from school at the end of 2007 and by February 2008 I was working full-time,” she says.
“The most helpful thing I’ve learned from other couples in this industry is that you don’t go more than three weeks without seeing each other.”
Robbie never anticipated the film career that was to follow, but like so many successful Aussie exports before her (Kylie Minogue, Guy Pearce, Natalie Imbruglia), the soap was the perfect launch pad.
However, after nearly three years on Ramsay Street, she was ready for a change.
“I was thinking, ‘I don’t want to be on Neighbours for the next 20 years,’” admits Robbie.
“I started seeing people make that leap to America and I was like, ‘Great, I’ll do that.’ My contract ended and five days later I was on a plane to LA.”
Robbie’s US career began in 2011 with the short-lived ’60s-set TV series Pan Am, followed by comedy film About Time from British director Richard Curtis.
A year later she beat the likes of Olivia Wilde, Amber Heard and Jessica Biel to the role of Naomi Lapaglia, the wife of Leonardo DiCaprio’s avaricious banker Jordan Belfort in The Wolf Of Wall Street.
Rave reviews followed and Robbie suddenly found herself in the same league as Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone.
But her impressive turn in the Academy Award-nominated film led to challenges.
Scripts flooded in, however, many were for similar blonde-bombshell roles. Determined to avoid typecasting, she says she “had to fight back and say no to a lot of roles, and instead seek out characters that people would ᴀssume I wouldn’t play”.
Robbie displayed her range in the post-apocalyptic story Z For Zachariah, in which she played against type as a resilient survivor eking out a living on her farm (“we dyed my hair, I didn’t wear make-up and we put freckles on my face”), as well as the World War II drama Suite Française.
“I know that once I have kids, they’ll be my priority, so I want to do the family thing later.”
It was on the set of the latter in France that Robbie met her now boyfriend, Brit Tom Ackerley, who was working as an ᴀssistant film director.
The pair’s three-year relationship has been low-key by Tinseltown standards – they live together in a London share house (although they’re planning to move to LA later this year).
Robbie recently described Ackerley as “the best-looking guy in London” and says, logistically, life is complicated because of their conflicting schedules.
“The most helpful thing I’ve learned from other couples in this industry is that you don’t go more than three weeks without seeing each other,” she says.
“Being in a long-distance relationship can be really hard when you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. It can mess with your head, so the three-week rule is key.”
Robbie is keen to settle down at some point though and has plans for a family.
“I want TONS of children. Well, maybe not too many,” she laughs.
“I grew up in a family of four [kids], so that sounds like a good number. We’ll see what happens; no time soon. I know that once I have kids, they’ll be my priority, so I want to do the family thing later.”
It’s just as well, because her schedule has been jam-packed. In 2015 she went toe-to-toe with Will Smith in comedy thriller Focus, gave a scene-stealing cameo in the Oscar-nominated drama The Big Short and backed it up this year with a role in Tina Fey’s comedy Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
In her latest project, The Legend Of Tarzan, Robbie plays a very different version of Jane than the stereotypical “damsel in distress” depiction.
Engrossing and exciting, the film thankfully avoids tired, Sєxist Hollywood clichés.
“There is no ‘me Tarzan, you Jane’ situation,” laughs Robbie.
She describes her character as “fiercely independent and incredibly capable. There is actually a line in the film where Tarzan says ‘scream for me’ and Jane is like, ‘What? Like a damsel?’ and I spit in his face.”
“She wants him, but doesn’t need him. Jane can take care of herself and is constantly getting out of danger on her own.”
The story follows Tarzan, who was raised in the African jungle but is now living in Victorian London as John Clayton (Lord Greystoke) with his wife, Jane.
John is sent on a trade mission back into the Congo and becomes embroiled in a ᴅᴇᴀᴅly revenge plot. Robbie took the role “because it was very different from the other stuff I’ve done”.
She adds, “It’s like the Indiana Jones or Pirates Of The Caribbean films, an epic action-adventure, a crazy, beautiful world and the characters are real and raw.”
The film is also romantic, but with a twist.
“Tarzan and Jane are a team,” says Robbie.
“She wants him, but doesn’t need him. Jane can take care of herself and is constantly getting out of danger on her own.”
Interestingly, while her co-star Alexander Skarsgård (who plays Tarzan) is semi-naked for half the film, Robbie gets to keep her clothes on.
“It was a mᴀssive role reversal that doesn’t normally happen,” she says, smiling.