Nobody’s Barbie is Margot Robbie:How to Get Around Hollywood: The Babylon Star

I would like Margot Robbie to take me to New York.She is taking me on a walking tour of some of the locations where they shot Babylon, her forthcoming film about the dizzying whirlwind that was Hollywood in the late 1920s. We are on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles.A security guard asks, “Excuse me, where are you going?” as we are about to enter the New York back lot, which is a fake neighborhood used as a stand-in for other cities.
We try saying “that way” and walk around the place like we own it.It doesn’t make sense to the guard.He inquires about our production.I anticipate that my tour guide will say, “I’m Margot Robbie” at this point.Instead, she mumbles something about “doing some post” and being with Babylon.After that, her voice stops.The Australian actor who brought Harley Quinn to life and was nominated for an Oscar for playing Tonya Harding is clearly oblivious to the fact that the security guard is standing in front of him.He instructs us to leave the set because someone is filming.Robbie respectfully concurs.As we come around the corner, she laughs.She says, “I ought to have a better cover story.”I’d be better at that, you’d think.“I actually find it hard to believe that Robbie encounters hard nos very frequently.I’ve heard stories about her tenacity, not because of her looks—she is stunning, and that song has been sung countless times—but rather because of them.Her first big job, as a guest star, was supposed to be on the Australian soap opera Neighbours; however, she made such an impression that they kept her for three years.Robbie had the audacity to slap Leonardo DiCaprio during the audition, which contributed to her landing her first major role in The Wolf of Wall Street.She also wrote an unannounced letter to Quentin Tarantino in which she expressed her desire to collaborate with him one day and eventually found herself on the Hollywood set of Once Upon a Time…
Robbie’s work ethic is emphasized by everyone I talk to.According to Christina Hodson, a close friend and the writer of the 2020 Suicide Squad spin-off Birds of Prey, “Her superpower and the thing that makes her a talent that is only available once in a generation is that she can do everything.”It’s pretty terrifying to watch Margot learn a new skill.The stunt teams would once demonstrate something to her when we performed stunts for Birds of Prey.After attempting it once, she surpasses them the second time around.Allison Janney, Robbie’s costar on I, Tonya, has said that she reminds her of Katharine Hepburn, who herself created The Philadelphia Story when she thought she wasn’t getting the roles she deserved.She reminds Martin Scorsese of Carole Lombard and Joan Crawford, two legends, he says:Like Lombard, she’s lively, strikingly lovely, and she has an incredible funny bone, about herself in particular.Like Crawford, she’s totally grounded and right away instructing — she enters the edge and you focus on her.”Thus, Robbie’s role as a fictional Hollywood icon on the rise in Babylon, the epic comedy-drama directed by Robbie, Brad Pitt, and Diego Calva, is appropriate.The film, which hits theaters on December 23, is set during the business’ most out of control time, when the cash was streaming, the principles were not many, and the conceivable outcomes of popularity and achievement felt interminable.It aspires to be a kaleidoscopic look at the movie business just as talkies were about to forever upend the industry from the hour or so I’ve watched it.To avoid sounding like Nicole Kidman in that AMC commercial, Babylon aims to capture the decadence and depravity of the time as well as the madness and the magic of filmmaking.Robbie describes Babylon as “the greatest thing that ever happened” despite the chaos of filmmaking that can be seen on screen.Additionally, filming it was exactly the same.It was so bizarre, fun, amazing, and out of control.It was without a doubt the best thing I had ever done.“For the record, I believe Robbie, even though she may be sitting next to me because she needs to promote a movie.Her portrayal of Nellie LaRoy in Babylon is probably the most like her own.Nellie is a Hollywood outsider who is full of vigor, spice, and an uncontrollable energy.She gets lucky enough to get her first role, but she gives a performance that is so unique that it propels her to stardom.According to Babylon’s director, Damien Chazelle, “Margot is able to tap into this wildness and this bravado where you don’t know what’s going to come, and it keeps surprising you.””Usually, you think of untrained actors who have that kind of raw energy.That is absolutely not the case with Margot.To put it another way, she has real technique and is a tornado.Similar to Nellie, 32-year-old Robbie has developed a career that exemplifies what it means to be a contemporary movie star. His breakout performance in The Wolf of Wall Street caught the attention of Hollywood.Even though she is still a little uneasy in the spotlight, she is a no-nonsense actor and producer who alternates between dark indies and blockbusters.She says, her hand hovering over her head, “The way I try to explain this job—and this world—to people is that the highs are really high and the lows are really, really low.”And I suppose, if you’re lucky, it all comes to a middle ground.”