Margot Robbie

Margot Robbie (birthname: Margot Elise Robbie) has become a widely acclaimed actor capable of colorful, sometimes wildly theatrical expression, as well as a rising producer for features and television. After breaking into features with a pair of minor indie thrillers, Robbie landed a major supporting role in her first significant film, writer-director Richard Curtis’s rom-com, About Time (2013), starring Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy, and Tom Hollander.

Robbie grabbed Hollywood’s attention in the same year with the only prominent female role in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jon Favreau, and Jean Dujardin, and earning $392 million worldwide, Scorsese’s top-grossing film to date. Margot Robbie then starred in Craig Zobel’s striking last-man-on-Earth drama, Z for Zacharia (2015), with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Chris Pine. Robbie’s next studio (Warners) project was co-writer-directors Gleen Ficarra’s and John Requa’s Focus (2015), with Will Smith, earning $158 million worldwide and continuing Robbie’s box office success rate.

Robbie played support to Michelle Williams, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Matthias Schoenaerts in her first-period film, Suite Francaise (2015), while a sign of her increasing star profile happened in Adam McKay’s dark comedy, The Big Short (2015), in which she appeared as herself in a cameo. Robbie reunited with directors Ficarra and Requa for the war comedy-drama, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016), starring Tina Fey, Martin Freeman, Alfred Molina, and Billy Bob Thornton.

In her biggest-budget project to date, Margot Robbie co-starred opposite Alexander Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson, Djimon Hounsou, Jim Broadbent, and Christoph Waltz in director David Yates’ The Legend of Tarzan (2016), grossing over $357 million. Robbie’s star-making role followed as Harley Quinn in writer-director David Ayer’s DC Extended Universe hit, Suicide Squad (2016), with Will Smith, Jared Leto, Joel Kinnaman, Viola Davis, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje.

Despite widespread critical pans, the movie scored over $746 million worldwide. Robbie’s first project as lead star and producer came in 2017 with her Oscar-nominated Best Actress turn in I, Tonya, with Allison Janney (who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar), Sebastian Stan, Julianne Nicholson, and Bobby Cannavale.

Margot Robbie then reunited with Domhnall Gleeson in the A.A. Milne biopic, Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017), with Kelly Macdonald, followed by a vocal role in the 2018 animated version of Peter Rabbit, again opposite Gleeson, and James Corden, Rose Byrne, Sam Neill, and Elizabeth Debicki—which continued in 2021 with the sequel, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, again directed by Will Gluck—both earning a combined worldwide gross exceeding $500 million.

Robbie’s first commercial failure came with her second star-producer project, writer-director Vaughn Stein’s thriller, Terminal (2018), with Simon Pegg and Mike Myers. Robbie was able to strut her stuff in the lavish British drama opposite Saoirse Ronan, Mary Queen of Scots (2018), directed by Josie Rourke, and featuring Guy Pearce and Jack Lowden.

The third star-producer project for Margot Robbie landed in 2019, the thriller Dreamland, co-starring Finn Cole and Garrett Hedlund, and Kerry Condon. Robbie made a bigger splash in 2019 as the starlet Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, earning nearly $375 million worldwide after its Cannes Film Festival premiere and ten Oscar nominations and two Oscar wins.

Robbie’s own Oscar bid (a Best Supporting Actress nomination) happened that same year with director Jay Roach’s Fox News-based Bombshell, co-starring Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, John Lithgow, Allison Janney, and Malcolm McDowell. Margot Robbie revived her Harley Quinn role in her fourth film as star-producer, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), with Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Jurnee Smollett-Bell, and extending the role in writer-director James Gunn’s own take on the DC Extended Universe saga, The Suicide Squad (2021), with Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, Sylvester Stallone, and Viola Davis.

Robbie earned her first producer accolade (from the Producers Guild of America) for Emerald Fennell’s feminist revenge thriller, Promising Young Woman (2020), with Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Jennifer Coolidge, and Laverne Cox. Robbie’s first role not in sequels in over two years happened in the fall of 2022 with David O. Russell’s comedy, Amsterdam, with John David Washington and Christian Bale.

Robbie’s 2022 was capped by writer-director Damien Chazelle’s period Hollywood epic, Babylon, starring Brad Pitt, followed by two major 2023 projects: Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, with Robbie (also producer) enacting the iconic title character opposite Ryan Gosling’s Ken, and Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, with a massive cast led by Tom Hanks, Adrien Brody, Bryan Cranston, Tilda Swinton, and Jeffrey Wright. Robbie launched another potential franchise projected with the tentatively titled Untitled Margot Robbie Oceans Eleven Film (date to be announced), co-starring Gosling and directed by Jay Roach.