The co-star who made Margot Robbie forget she was acting: “I’ve never experienced that with anyone else”
It’s an enviable position for any rising star to be in, but the biggest challenge that faced Margot Robbie after landing her breakthrough role was to avoid being typecast forevermore as a sultry blonde bombshell.
The actor had barely gotten her feet wet in Hollywood before she was plucked from relative obscurity and handed third billing in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, where the majority of her scenes took place opposite long-tenured A-list megastar Leonardo DiCaprio.
It was only the fourth feature she’d ever appeared in and her first American production, and yet there she was holding her own against one of the best actors of their generation in a debauched ode to excess being directed by one of cinema’s greatest-ever filmmakers. It was a daunting challenge, but one she stepped up to masterfully.
Performances don’t come much more star-making than The Wolf of Wall Street‘s Naomi Lapaglia, which instantly made Robbie one of the industry’s hottest new commodities. Fast forward a decade, and she’s a powerhouse producer with Academy Award nominations on either side of the camera, a rapid rise that began when she had to jump onto the DiCaprio/Scorsese train that had been running full steam ahead for years before she’d even gotten on board.
“I would have to keep up with whatever they had just established without words,” she admitted to Globe and Mail. “They have this momentum. They’re like a snowball that keeps rolling.” Robbie was a phenomenon opposite DiCaprio in their supercharged scenes together, and she became so invested in both her character and his performance that she completely forgot she was even acting.
“He’s honestly the most talented actor I’ve come across,” she said. “I really don’t know how to explain it. He’s so believable that I forget I’m acting when I act opposite him. I’ve never experienced that with anyone else.” It was an eye-opening moment for a newcomer whose most notable role at the time was either 300+ episodes of Neighbours or the short-lived series Pan Am, but she acquitted herself tremendously.
While DiCaprio would likely play down his position as a generational talent, given his career-long disdain for playing the celebrity game, it’s a moniker that’s hard to argue with. After all, not only has he spent 30 years delivering knockout turns in a range of films covering multiple genres, but many of the colleagues he’s worked with along the way have called him one of the very best in the business.
Robbie’s star power has gone from strength to strength since The Wolf of Wall Street and shows no signs of slowing down, but she might never be able to replicate that experience she had with DiCaprio when Scorsese called to action, and the pair let the sparks fly.
