Early Life and Education

Margot Elise Robbie is an Australian actress and film producer who was born on 2 July 1990 in Dalby, Queensland, Australia and grew up in the Gold Coast Hinterland. Margot’s parents are Sarie Kessler (physiotherapist), and Doug Robbie (former farm owner) and she has three siblings: Lachlan or “Lachie”; Cameron; and Anya. Margot grew up on a farm and she and her siblings were raised by their single mother and had minimal contact with her father. At the age of 16, Margot worked three jobs simultaneously in order to help make ends meet. She studied drama at school and graduated from Somerset College. At the age of 17, Margot moved to Melbourne to begin acting professionally.

Philanthropy

Margot is a vocal supporter of human rights, women’s rights, gender equality and LGBT rights.  Through LuckyChap Entertainment, she and her co-founders have focused on promoting female stories driven by women.  In 2014, 2018 and 2020, Margot was part of a fundraising event in support of the Motion Picture & Television Fund, which assists people in the film and television industries who have limited or no resources.  In 2015, Margot became involved in the BCG Global Charity fundraising event and helped raise $12 million which was donated to different charities around the world.  During 2016, Margot and various other celebrities joined with the UN Refugee Agency staff in a petition aiming to gather public support for the growing number of families forced to flee conflict and persecution worldwide.  In late 2015, Margot joined Oxfam’s “I Hear You” project, a project which amplifies the personal stories of the world’s most vulnerable refugees.  The project donated more than $50,000 was donated to UNICEF’s “Children’s First” campaign.

In October 2016, while hosting the 42nd season premiere of Saturday Night Live, Margot made a stand for marriage equality in her native country Australia by wearing a T-shirt that read “Say ‘I Do’ Down Under”, with a map of the country in rainbow colours. The T-shirt was part of a campaign aiming for legalisation of same-sex marriage. A year later, she joined fellow actor Chris Hemsworth in advocating for the same purpose. In 2018, she pledged to support the Time’s Up initiative to protect women from harassment and discrimination. In April 2021, Margot was announced as the recipient of the inaugural RAD Impact Award, for inspiring purpose with her philanthropy. She chose to share the prize with Youngcare, a charity she had previously worked with and her donation benefitted young people with high care needs.

Professional Career

Margot began her career in Australian independent films in the late 2000s. She began acting professionally in 2007, when she starred in two feature films, I.C.U. (2009) and Vigilante (2008). After impressing the director with her performance during an audition, she won the lead in I.C.U. (2009) without an agent at the time. Margot also acted in commercials and had guest roles in The Elephant Princess (2009) and City Homicide (2008) as Caitlin Brentford. Margot began appearing as Donna Freedman on Neighbours (2008-2011) from June 2008. Margot was originally appearing in a guest arc, but she was soon promoted to a regular cast member. Margot was nominated for two Logie Awards for her role as Donna. In early 2009, Margot appeared in various Network Ten promotions, featuring an ensemble of popular Australian faces on the network. In July, she filled the “Generation Y” guest spot on TV show Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation. Margot also became a Youth Ambassador for missing persons as part of National Youth Week. In September 2010, Margot announced she would be leaving Neighbours (2008-2011) after a little over three years in the role. Her final scenes aired on 26 January 2011.

Margot moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career in Hollywood. During pilot season, she auditioned for the new series of Charlie’s Angels. However, the producers at Sony Pictures Television preferred her for the role of Laura Cameron, a newly trained flight attendant in ABC drama series Pan Am (2011-2012). The series was unfortunately cancelled after one season due to falling ratings, despite receiving positive reviews from critics. In May 2012, Margot joined the cast of Richard Curtis’ romantic comedy About Time (2013) alongside Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy. About Time (2013) received positive reviews and grossed $87 million on its $12 million budget.

In August 2012, Margot was cast in her breakout role of Naomi Belfort, the wife of protagonist Jordan Belfort in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) starring alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill. The film received positive reviews and became a commercial success with a worldwide gross of $392 million and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Critic Sasha Stone wrote “She’s [Margot] Scorsese’s best blonde bombshell discovery since Cathy Moriarty in Raging Bull. “Robbie is funny, hard and kills every scene she’s in”. She received a nomination for the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance and won the Empire Award for Best Newcomer. Vanity Fair named her one of its breakthrough actors of 2013 for her role. During 2014, Margot, Tom Ackerley Sophia Kerr and Josey McNamara formed LuckyChap Entertainment.

In 2015, Margot starred opposite Will Smith in the romantic comedy-drama film Focus (2015). She plays an inexperienced grifter learning the craft from Smith’s character. Despite mixed reviews, Margot’s performance was praised with Peter Travers of Rolling Stone writing “Robbie is a wow and then some. The Aussie actress who made us sit up and take notice as Leonardo DiCaprio’s wife in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) shows a comic flair backed up with beauty and steel. Even when Focus (2015) fumbles, Robbie deals a winning hand.” The industry was literally taking notice and Margot received a nomination for the BAFTA Rising Star Award. Next, Margot played the leading role of Ann Burden in the film adaptation of Z for Zachariah (2015) with Chris Pine and Chiwetel Ejiofor. The film premiered on 24 January 2015 at the Sundance Film Festival and has since received positive reviews since its theatrical release. Margot’s performance was praised by critics with Drew McWeeny of HitFix writing “Robbie’s work here establishes her as one of the very best actresses in her age range today”. Margot then appeared in a documentary special celebrating Neighbours‘ (2008-2011) 30th anniversary titled Neighbours 30th: The Stars Reunite. She also appeared in Suite Française (2014) alongside Michelle Williams, Kristin Scott Thomas and Matthias Schoenaerts, an adaptation of Irène Némirovsky’s novel where she met future husband British assistant director Tom Ackerley. The film received positive reviews. During this year Margot also made a cameo appearance in Adam McKay’s comedy-drama The Big Short (2015), released on 11 December 2015.

In 2016, Margot co-starred with Tina Fey in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016), a film adaptation of The Taliban Shuffle playing the role of Tanya Vanderpoel, a British TV journalist. Later that year, Margot starred as Jane Porter in David Yates’s The Legend of Tarzan (2016), opposite Alexander Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz. Margot went on to play the role of Harley Quinn in Warner Bros.’ DC Comics supervillain film Suicide Squad (2016), as part of an ensemble cast that includes Will Smith, Jared Leto, Viola Davis and Joel Kinnaman. In May, Calvin Klein announced Margot would be the face of their Deep Euphoria fragrance. In July, Margot was confirmed to star in an adaptation of Matt Ruff’s thriller novel Bad Monkeys as Jane Charlotte. She will also produce the film for her production company LuckyChap Entertainment. In October, Margot hosted the season 42 premiere of Saturday Night Live, with musical guest The Weeknd.

In 2017, Margot starred alongside Domhnall Gleeson in Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017) as Daphne de Sélincourt, wife of author A. A. Milne. She next portrayed the American figure skater Tonya Harding in I, Tonya (2017), written by Steven Rogers and directed by Craig Gillespie. Reviewing the film for The Boston Globe, Ty Burr wrote, “Robbie is taller, bigger than the tiny, fierce Harding, but she gets the athlete’s forward drive, and the anger that seemed to fuel the dynamo, and when life hands Tonya lemons, Robbie sets her jaw and bears down.” For her portrayal of Harding, Robbie was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical and the Academy Award for Best Actress. She was the first actress nominated for an Academy Award for playing a real-life athlete. Margot was next cast as Maid Marian in Marian, which she will also co-produce for her production company LuckyChap Entertainment.  Margot appeared in a commercial promoting Nissan electric vehicles, in the annual Forbes 30 Under 30 list and was included on a similar list compiled by The Hollywood Reporter.  Further, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world; Martin Scorsese penned the article and referred to Margot as having “a unique audacity that surprises and challenges and just burns like a brand into every character she plays. […] Margot is stunning in all she is and all she does, and she will astonish us forever.”

In 2018, Margot voiced the character of Flopsy Rabbit in the animated/live-action film Peter Rabbit (2018), an adaptation of the Beatrix Potter book series. She then starred in Vaughn Stein’s thriller film Terminal (2018) as Annie. She also made a cameo appearance as Audrey in Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018), and portrayed Queen Elizabeth I in Mary Queen of Scots (2018), opposite Saoirse Ronan as Mary Stuart. David Sims of The Atlantic dismissed the latter film as a “tawdry soap opera” but wrote that “with her little screen time, [Robbie] still manages to convey a real sense of resentment over Mary’s status as a more traditional queen”. Margot was nominated for both a BAFTA and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress. In February this year, Margot was also announced as an ambassador for the luxury fashion brand Chanel and later she became the face of the company’s fragrance Chanel Gabrielle Chanel Essence. Fashion website Net-a-Porter ranked Margot as one of the best dressed women in 2018.

In 2019, Margot began the year producing and starring as a femme fatale in a period crime thriller set during the 1930s Dust Bowl called Dreamland (2019). She went on to portray the actress Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino’s comedy-drama Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019) in which she starring alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. In preparation for the role, she read the autobiography Roman by Polanski, who was married to Tate. Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that despite a lack of female roles in the film, “Robbie gives a sympathetic portrayal of Tate”, and Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph considered a sequence in which Tate watches her own performance in a cinema to be the film’s “most delightful” scene. She served as an executive producer and appeared in an episode on the Hulu comedy series Dollface (2019). Margot went on to play Kayla Pospisil in the drama Bombshell (2019). Kayla is a composite character based on several Fox News employees and the film centres on the stories of various female personnel at the news network and their altercations with its chairman Roger Ailes. In preparation for the role, she created a fake Twitter account to follow conservative young women, and watched videos of Katherine Harris, on whom she based her character’s accent. Taking particular note of an “excruciating scene” in which her character is sexually harassed, Owen Gleiberman of Variety credited the actress for “let[ting] us feel the pressure-cooker agony of what’s going on inside her.” Manohla Dargis of The New York Times also opined that “it is Robbie — with her panicked, darting eyes and tensely resistant, then capitulating physicality — who conveys the horror of sexual harassment.” She received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, Screen Actors Guild and Critics Choice Awards. During the same year, Forbes ranked her as the eighth highest-paid actress in the world, with an annual income of $23.5 million, and The Hollywood Reporter listed her among the 100 most powerful people in entertainment.

In 2020, Margot reprised her role as Harley Quinn in Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey (2020).  Margot originally pitched the idea for the film to Warner Bros. in 2015 as she was determined to make a female ensemble action film.  She spent three years developing the project under her production company LuckyChap Entertainment.  She made a concerted effort to hire a female director and screenwriter.  Regarding her commitment to the film, she commented: “I’d been thinking for quite some time how there was a real gap in the market for a female ensemble action film. And I love action films, and I think there’s a misconception perhaps subconsciously for people: action films are for dudes, girls don’t really like them. Which is just not true. […] So I knew I wanted to find that, and help put that on screen somewhere.”  Margot and Birds of Prey (2020), mostly garnered critical praise.  Ian Freer of Empire wrote that “the MVP is Robbie, who lends Harley charming quirk and believable menace, hinting at Harley’s inner life without reams of dialogue. When she’s on screen [the film] has the impact of a baseball bat to the head.”  She received two nominations at the 46th People’s Choice Awards for her role.  Margot went on to serve as a producer on the film Promising Young Woman (2020), a comedy thriller by writer-director Emerald Fennell.  The film stars Carey Mulligan as a woman who seeks to avenge the death of her best friend, who was a victim of rape. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim, later receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

In 2021, Margot reprised her role as Harley Quinn in The Suicide Squad (2021) and her voice role as Flopsy Rabbit in Peter Rabbit 2 (2021).  Margot is also set to star in a live-action Barbie film co-written by partners Greta Gerwig (also directing) and Noah Baumbach, and in David O. Russell’s untitled film.  She is also set to star in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon (2022).

Updated June 27, 2021.