Margot Robbie ‘my dating life is nowhere near as exciting as the tabloids make it out’, 2015
IF Margot Robbie had a dastardly plan for this article to begin with a reference to her munching on a chocolate bar, I surrender. Drumroll, please. The following is an official ‘documented instance of public eating’ (coined ‘DIPE’ by a Hollywood publicist).
We’re sitting in a room at the uber-cool Crosby Street Hotel in New York’s Soho and Robbie’s working her way through the treat, the detritus from her fruit salad and a pot of tea between us. “Do you want some chocolate?” she says in her warm, slightly husky, very Aussie voice. “It’s so good. It’s Lindt – the real deal.”
Maybe she is angling for the glossy men’s mag specialty of describing slender female actors enjoying high-calorie food to demonstrate how effortlessly they maintain their hotness. Or perhaps she has the metabolism of a busy 24-year-old and likes chocolate? In any case, however she is approaching her blistering post-Wolf of Wall Street ascension, it’s working.
Today, the former Neighbours star is promoting the romantic comedy Focus, in which she plays Jess, a wannabe hustler eager to learn from Nicky (Will Smith), the best in the business. She also has a number of other film projects under her belt, including Tarzan (she plays Jane opposite Alexander Skarsgård’s Tarzan) and Z for Zachariah, where she’s part of a post-apocalyptic love triangle with Chris Pine and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
The sexually charged role of Naomi, the ‘Duchess of Bay Ridge’, in Wolf – Martin Scorsese’s 2013 adaptation of the autobiography of epically crooked stockbroker Jordan Belfort, played by Leonardo DiCaprio – was Robbie’s big break in Hollywood.
A month after saying goodbye to Ramsay Street and heading to Los Angeles, the Gold Coast-raised blonde landed a role alongside Christina Ricci in the 2011 TV series Pan Am, but it was cancelled after one season because of low ratings. The silver lining was, of course, that instead of being tied up filming network TV, Robbie could throw her hat in the ring for <Wolf>, a role every hot young thing in Hollywood was gunning for. Although she also landed a part in the Richard Curtis movie About Time (2013), it’s Robbie as Naomi, pushing her stiletto into a helpless DiCaprio’s face, simpering in her spot-on Brooklyn accent, that is seared into everyone’s minds.
Does she have time to reflect on the ways her life has changed? “I honestly don’t,” she says. “It’s not until I do interviews… where someone points it out or puts it so explicitly, that I’m like, ‘Yeah, wow, it’s crazy and bizarre.’ Initially when people ask me that, I say, ‘No, life hasn’t really changed that much.’ And they’ll ask, ‘But are there paparazzi?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s crazy.’ And they’re like, ‘You’ve been to the Oscars?’ And I say, ‘That’s crazy, too.’ So yeah, life’s actually changed a lot, but I [haven’t noticed] because the changes have been implemented gradually.”
Like the proverbial frog in boiling water? “Yep, good analogy,” she laughs. “That’s exactly what it’s like. I’m guessing the frog dies at the end of that one but, ah, we won’t get to the ending. So, things have changed and gotten crazy, but I guess when things are so fast-paced, you’re just trying to keep in step with it all. My focus has just been on keeping up to speed.”
Has she been offered other sex-bomb roles since Wolf? Is there an expectation she’ll do nudity now? She nods. “You hit the nail on the head. There have been a lot of assumptions since then that I’ll do nudity in every film, which I really don’t want. It’s not that I’m for nudity, or against it. It’s just that I don’t think it’s necessary to put it in the film for shock value. In The Wolf of Wall Street, there needed to be shock value. [Naomi] needed to come out naked for him to stop and be, ‘Whoa!’ It was in context.”
When she’s not doing the movie-star thing – filming in far-flung locations, looking glamorous on red carpets and being linked to A-list actors in the tabloids – Robbie keeps it real. Her home base is a London share-house, where she finds herself stepping over the many houseguests that crash at her place.
“Three of the housemates are boys,” she says. “We thought we could keep the house clean on our own. Turns out, we can’t, so we try to get a cleaner in once a week, [but] it’s still an absolute pigsty. We have so many friends staying with us. There are five of us living there, but most of the time there are about eight people sleeping there, and then on weekends, sometimes you wake up and there are 11 people. We’ve got that house with the revolving door; it’s the best. I love it so much.”
One of her flatmates is childhood friend Sophia Kerr, who now works as her assistant. She’d been going to events as Robbie’s ‘plus one’ and generally being helpful during the madness of getting ready – letting stylists in, fetching Diet Cokes and organising drivers. One night, before the Empire Awards last year (where she was named Best Female Newcomer), Robbie remarked to her friend that she was “really good at this”, and Kerr replied: “This is what I do for a job, remember? I’m a team assistant.”
Robbie continues: “Then a couple of months later, they tell me, ‘So, we’re hiring your assistant for Tarzan. Can you come in and interview people?’ And I say, ‘Actually, I already have someone.’
‘Great,’ they say, ‘bring them in.’
And we’re both thinking [Robbie leans forward conspiratorially], ‘Are we allowed to do this?’ And now Sophia works for me full-time as my assistant.”
It sounds like the plot of the HBO comedy (created by and starring Emily Mortimer) Doll & Em, I say. “I know!” says Robbie. “Everyone’s told us about it. Like, ‘It’s you two!’ But it’s great getting to hang out with your best friend all the time. Plus, she’s literally born for this job. She’s so good.”
In the TV series, the boss-employee dynamic puts a serious strain on the friendship. Have the pair experienced similar issues, with Robbie becoming a bit of a diva and Kerr having to knock her down a few pegs? “No, but a couple of times, if I’ve been upset over something, she’ll say, ‘Hey, it’s not that big a deal.’ And I’m like, ‘Yep, you’re right, it’s not.’”
So, she thinks their friendship will survive? “It has so far,” says Robbie. “It’s like the most perfect friendship and work relationship. It’s solid.”
Another important person in her life is her boyfriend, Englishman Tom Ackerley, who she met when he was working as an assistant director on her upcoming wartime drama Suite Française. Fresh from my pre-interview Google of Robbie, where I found photos of the pair at a Rangers game the previous night, I recognise Ackerley waiting for the lift on my way up to meet her.
“Oh, no way!” she says, smiling. “He must be heading out.”
He’s very cute, I add. Well done.
“My grandma said the same thing,” Robbie laughs, describing their recent meeting in Australia. “She said, ‘Isn’t he handsome?’ and I said, ‘He’s right here, you can stop speaking about him as if he’s not right here.’ She was very cute. And then she says, ‘And he’s so tall.’ I was like, ‘Again, stating the obvious, and he’s still right here. Moving on!’ It was very funny.”
With different filming schedules, it must be difficult for them to be in the same place at the same time.
“Yeah, I mean, this is a rare occasion where he could actually get away from work in between jobs, but it’s so hard,” she explains. “There’s so much travelling. I don’t know how anyone makes a relationship work [like this], to be honest.”
Lots of Skype?
“Yep, lots of Skype.”
Robbie had better get used to being in demand. Her performance in Z for Zachariah, as a resourceful farmer’s daughter, left alone and struggling for survival, created a lot of buzz at the recent Sundance Film Festival. It prompted this observation by Vanity Fair’s film critic Richard Lawson: “But for all its quiet graces, all its human sighs and insights, the film loses a critical amount of weight as it gradually sidelines the wonderful woman created by Margot Robbie. Who, it should be said, is now a movie star. As far as I’m concerned, anyway.”
But back to Focus, the film we’re here to talk about. It’s a rom-com in the charming guise of a classic crime caper. Robbie’s co-star, Smith, is 22 years her senior – something I had to double-check because he’s so ripped, it’s hard to believe he’s 46.
“I know!” she says. “Like, honestly. That body. Twentysomething-year-olds couldn’t achieve that body. It’s absurd.”
I reel off a list of her other co-stars, all playing her love interest, and their ages: DiCaprio, 40; Pine, 34; Ejiofor, 37; Skarsgård, 38. These are good examples of the enduring Hollywood dynamic of the older man playing the romantic lead opposite a much younger woman. Is that something Robbie’s thought about? Does it concern her at all?
“Not… really,” she says. “Because I didn’t even know Alex’s age until you just said it. I think when the dynamic works, it just works, and you can have two people at the exact same age and they don’t have chemistry.
“If someone said, ‘Margot Robbie and Will Smith,’ you’d be like, ‘No, that would never happen.’ Then we go in the [audition] room and it’s like, ‘Oh, they’ve got a great rapport.’ So who knows? But, no, it doesn’t concern me specifically. I think, at the end of the day, age is just a number. It’s like in real life, I’ve got friends who are dating someone their age or dating someone who’s twice their age, and they’re equally in love.”
It could also be a testament to her maturity that she can pull it off convincingly, I suggest.
“Oh, well, I hope so,” she says with a laugh. “Both Will and Leo said they read with a couple of other girls and they both said, ‘The other girls seemed a little scared of me. You didn’t seem scared.’ And I was like, ‘No, I just wanted to get the scene.’”
Robbie also slapped DiCaprio in her audition, which doesn’t exactly scream intimidated.
“Yeah, I think that helped,” she laughs. “And I called Will a dick in the middle of the scene [an ad-lib that ended up in the finished movie]. Acting 101: just abuse your co-stars and you’ll get the job.”
Another thing Robbie is going to have to get comfortable with is tabloid speculation about her love life. She’s been linked to DiCaprio, took to Twitter to deny “ridiculous” rumours of an affair with Smith and, not long after our interview, People magazine asked, ‘Is Romance Blooming Between Alexander Skarsgård and Margot Robbie?’ after they were pictured together at Sundance parties.
“And, recently, me and Orlando [Bloom],” Robbie adds when I mention DiCaprio and Smith.
“Honestly, my dating life according to the tabloids is very exciting, and the most hilarious thing is that it’s nowhere near as exciting as the tabloids have ever made it out to be.”
At least she can live vicariously through her tabloid self?
“Yes… That Margot in the tabloids, she is absolutely killing it in the dating world,” she laughs. “No, I made a conscious decision to avoid dating, not just actors, but anyone with a profile, because it’s added attention. If people are talking about me, I want it to be because of the work I’m doing and not the person I’m seeing. Which sucks because it totally takes away the credibility of [the film]. For example, the rumours about Leo. We were making a really great film and it’s overshadowed by the fact everybody’s like, ‘They’re together.’ Why can’t you just say, ‘They’re making a really cool film’? Get excited about the film, you know? It sucks.”
And, as she’s not a model, it’s very unlikely that he would date her anyway, I point out helpfully.
“Yes, exactly,” she laughs. “I’m not a Victoria’s Secret model, so it’s a silly rumour to begin with.”
Rumours aside, the interesting thing about Robbie isn’t who she is or isn’t dating. It’s the fact she can continually hold her own, both in auditions and onscreen, with some of Hollywood’s finest talent. Often stealing the scene. She seems to have a knack for putting her stamp on things.
“I keep waiting for someone to pull me up and be like, ‘You can’t do that; you can’t just behave like that and hit people and swear at them,’” she says, laughing. “[But] so far it seems to be working.”
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