“It’s so much more fun for people to describe it as winning the lottery and the overnight sensation. But it was all very strategic: These are the steps that need to be accomplished.” – Margot Robbie
Before The Wolf of Wall Street, few people knew who actress Margot Robbie was, but since then, everyone knows who Robbie. The talented, gorgeous actress is hard to miss, and her performance as fan-favorite character Harley Quinn in the upcoming Suicide Squad, a movie about the villains of the DC Comics Universe, looks to be the highlight of the film. In an interview with the New York Times, Robbie spoke about her career’s highs and lows and how she weighs the sexuality of the characters she plays against her self-confidence.
Despite working with Martin Scorsese and starring in a major comic book movie as a popular character, Robbie admits that it is still a challenge for her to find work. She says, “It’s always a hustle. I thought it would be a mountain, where you get to the top, and then it’s like: ‘Wheeee! It’s so easy after this’… Any time I get near the top, I’m like, ‘There’s another mountain!’ The hustle continues.”
One of Robbie’s first “mountain top” moments was being cast in the ABC drama Pan Am, a series that came with a lot of hype that did not translate into ratings (it was cancelled after 14 episodes). She points out, “It’s so much more fun for people to describe it as winning the lottery and the overnight sensation. But it was all very strategic: These are the steps that need to be accomplished.”
Other challenges were character-based, like her decision on whether or not to do The Wolf of Wall Street based on the nudity. She recalls, “The sacrifice I have to make is that I have to do this nudity thing that I don’t really want to do. But I get to work with Scorsese, which I really want to do. O.K., what outweighs what?” In fact, Scorsese said she could play the role with no nudity but she thought it wasn’t true to the character, adding, “I was like, she wouldn’t do that, no way. She would be fully naked.”
Similarly, Robbie points to the tight, short clothing she wears as Harley Quinn as part of the fun-loving character. She says that Quinn is “wearing hot pants because they’re sparkly and fun, [not because] she wanted guys to look at her ass. As Margot, no, I don’t like wearing that. I’m eating burgers at lunchtime, and then you go do a scene where you’re hosed down and soaking wet in a white T-shirt, it’s so clingy and you’re self-conscious about it.”
Though many would scratch their heads at the leggy, sexy blonde actress being self-conscious about her looks, Robbie attributes her on-screen looks to a particular mindset. She says, “You need to act like you think you’re really gorgeous, and you need to be completely convinced with that, because everyone else will believe it, too.”
