Margot Robbie Upbringing

After a decade on the silver screen, Margot Robbie is a bona fide A-lister with roles in acclaimed and celebrated films, having worked with such high-profile directors as Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. Since 2016, she has defined the role of Harley Quinn, all the way down to a Jersey accent so thick you'd never know her true country of origin. After playing the role three times — most recently in James Gunn's 2021 film The Suicide Squad — Robbie has taken on an even more iconic pop culture figure with Barbie.

Fame and the glamour it entails seem to suit Margot Robbie. A single look at that million-dollar smile tells you all you need to know: This person was born for the screen. She's played homewreckers, heartbreakers, and iconic women both fictional and historical. With a heavyweight Hollywood history under her belt, what is it that makes Margot Robbie tick with such explosive star power? This is how Margot Robbie transformed from childhood to Harley Quinn ... and beyond.

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Even some of her most vivacious fans don't know that Margot Robbie was born on the gold coast of Australia as the daughter of a sugarcane magnate. Although Robbie's father left when she was very young, resulting in a strained relationship between the two (her mom walked her down the aisle at her wedding), she has him to thank for her upbringing on a rural farm, and for her education at private schools.

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Margot Robbie has made no secret of her disdain for her father, providing a tight-lipped answer when Harper's Bazaar asked her which qualities she takes from him. None. Nothing. I'm not like him at all, she said, refusing to expand on the subject. Other than her education at Somerset College, it does seem like Robbie was left to fend for herself growing up, which goes a long way toward explaining why she's chosen to remain estranged from her dad.

Despite having a rich father, Robbie claims she and her mom, Sarie Kessler, struggled to get by after he left. Robbie picked up odd jobs to make ends meet, including a job making sandwiches at Subway. She told Vanity Fair that she was initially tasked with slicing vegetables and cleaning cutlery, but then she was promoted to the sandwich line. I was really good at it! she said. I make a mean Subway. The trick is to spread everything evenly out and cut it so well that there is never a bad bite.

Robbie's other jobs included catering, warehouse work, and a stint at a pharmacy, taking her first real job at a mere 10 years old. However, it's safe to say that Margot Robbie got the last laugh. After landing her first big acting gig on an Australian soap drama, Subway hired her to star in a commercial spot.

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Audiences outside Margot Robbie's home country of Australia probably think of her as the avatar of Tonya Harding or Sharon Tate, but back home, she's often recognized for her work on Neighbours, in which she played a character named Donna Freedman. The character became a fan favorite due to what many saw as positive bisexual representation (Donna hooked up with both men and women) and Robbie's obvious star power.

Originally cast as a one-off role, Donna soon became a recurring character on the show. She ended up staying on for three years, but in 2010, she left Australia to pursue a career in Hollywood, telling TV Week, I want to go to America; it's always been my goal to work in Hollywood. It's the one stage in my life where I have absolutely nothing holding me down. Based on what was to follow for the young star, leaving her beloved soap was a very good decision.

After being cast in several movies, Margot Robbie wasn't yet a household name. All that changed when Martin Scorsese picked her to play Jordan Belfort's wife, Naomi Lapaglia, in the veteran director's stunning epic of greed and debauchery, The Wolf of Wall Street. The role had her playing opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, whose deranged energy she matched beat for beat, no small feat considering how committed to the part her scene partner was. 

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Robbie reportedly got the part by slapping Leonardo DiCaprio in the face during her audition, a move that was decidedly not in the original script. She told Harper's Bazaar, In my head I was like, 'You have literally 30 seconds left in this room and if you don't do something impressive nothing will ever come of it. It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance, just take it.'

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That slap set in motion a storied career which led to her iconic role as Tonya Harding in I, Tonya and a turn as the late starlet Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood. Along the way, however, she defined one of the most beloved villains in superhero history.

When she signed onto David Ayer's Suicide Squad, Robbie didn't know much about the character. I wasn't familiar with the comics. I had vaguely heard of them, but I had no idea that there was such a big fanbase for Harley, she told the Washington Post. Even so, her take on the character was a hit, and Vogue listed the character as the number one most Googled Halloween costume of 2016. That costume was a wild departure from the Joker-themed one-piece of the comics, consisting of fishnets, a studded belt, and a ripped tee shirt reading, Daddy's Lil Monster. Robbie would later update the costume to cater less to the male gaze in films over which she had more control.

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Though she initially had no plans to reprise the character of Harley, Robbie leapt at the opportunity to redeem the character with a feminist spin in Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), which was released in 2020. She was an executive producer on the picture, which told the story of Harley Quinn's breakup with the Joker and saw her acting opposite Ewan McGregor as the villainous Roman Sionis. I thought the industry needed a girl-gang action film, she told Rotten Tomatoes.

Robbie returned as Harley once more in James Gunn's The Suicide Squad in 2021,  but for now she seems to have relinquished the role to Lady Gaga for 2024's Joker: Folie à Deux.

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Fans fell in love with Margot Robbie's portrayal of Harley Quinn in 2016's Suicide Squad, but if it wasn't for Robbie's intense dedication, that would have been the last time any of us saw the character. When it came time to bring Harley back for another adventure, Robbie stepped up and put more work into 2020's Birds of Prey than anyone realized.

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The movie, which is less a sequel to Suicide Squad and more a companion piece exploring Harley's offbeat life, forced Robbie to work in multiple roles at once. Obviously she was the star of the film, but as one of the founders of LuckyChap Entertainment, she was also acting as a producer on the project. She went above and beyond in both jobs, getting all the pieces put together to make the film a reality and committing to the role so much that she did most of her own stunts.

Robbie wanted to do as many of Harley's action sequences herself as possible, and she brought that same energy to James Gunn's sequel, or soft reboot, The Suicide Squad. Harley Quinn's biggest scene in the movie involves gymnast-level flexibility as she uses her feet to pick a lock before escaping from a small prison cell, and Robbie did almost all the work on her own. In an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Gunn said Robbie is like a human Swiss Army knife.

There are transition periods in every career. Margot Robbie went from TV star to movie star, but she didn't stop there. Between her time on the set of The Wolf of Wall Street and the moment that fans first saw her as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad, Robbie was laying the groundwork for the next phase of her career.

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I didn't want to pick up another script where I was the wife or the girlfriend — just a catalyst for the male story line. It was uninspiring, she told Harper's Bazaar in 2018. Playing Naomi Lapaglia alongside Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort might have helped skyrocket Robbie to fame, but it wasn't exactly the kind of role she was keen on playing again and again. So she decided to solve the problem of potentially being typecast by opening her own production studio.

LuckyChap Entertainment began operating in 2014, and the fledgling production studio has grown significantly since then. Not every one of its films have been smashing successes, but some, like 2017's I, Tonya, have been Oscar-worthy. Of course, Robbie still stars in other films, but when she's working on a project today, she's most often wearing a producer's hat as well.

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