Margot Robbie names the “best sex scene” in cinema history
Margot Robbie has quietly become one of the defining screen presences of the last decade. With a career that stretches from big-budget chaos to sharp, character-led dramas, she’s carved out a space few actors manage: respected by critics, adored by audiences, and always picking projects that keep the industry watching.
The Australian actor has come a long way since her debut on the classic soap Neighbours, making her way from the fictional Erinsborough suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, to the heights of the Hollywood hills. Working with the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and James Gunn, Robbie has proved herself as an actor who bridges the gap between mainstream cinema and independent filmmaking.
Robbie has managed to become a celebrated actor in both areas. She received critical acclaim for her performances in I, Tonya and Bombshell, for which she was twice nominated for an Academy Award. Her depiction of the comic-book character Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey has made her a popular commercial icon.
Inside Margot Robbie’s obsession with True Romance
It was her role in Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, that helped make her such a contemporary star, playing the central figure of Sharon Tate in the movie. During the press tour for the movie, Robbie discussed how another Tarantino project, the 1993 effort True Romance, had become her “favourite movie of all time”, following its release, even revealing that she walked down the aisle to the soundtrack of the cult classic.
There’s something fitting about Robbie falling for True Romance. The film is pure cinematic mythmaking, dressed up in grit, adrenaline and pop culture pastiche – everything that Tarantino would later refine, but never quite replicate with the same raw nerve. For Robbie, whose career has balanced on that tightrope between stylised excess and emotional precision, True Romance feels like a mirror. It’s loud, violent, romantic, and unafraid to wear its heart on its Hawaiian-shirted sleeve.
And in some way, her affection for it adds another layer to her own mythology. While most actors name-drop Citizen Kane or The Godfather to impress the press circuit, Robbie picks a bullet-riddled cult classic about doomed love and Elvis hallucinations. It’s less about prestige, more about instinct, which is pretty much like everything she’s done since breaking out.
Heaping the movie with overwhelming praise, this wouldn’t be the only time that Robbie would declare her love for the film in public, telling W Magazine in 2016 that the film has the “best sex scene ever,” describing the moment that the protagonists, Clarence (Christian Slater) and Alabama (Patricia Arquette) engage in a passionate moment in a phone booth, making love to the tune of ‘Chantilly Lace’.
The scene in question, set in a cramped phone booth and soundtracked by The Big Bopper, is as unfiltered as it is oddly tender. Clarence and Alabama, still flushed with the chaos of their shotgun romance, find themselves locked in a moment that’s more about reckless emotion than choreography. It’s messy, sincere, and entirely unselfconscious – the kind of scene that feels lived-in rather than staged. It’s no surprise Robbie singled it out. For a film dripping in stylised violence and grit, it’s one of the few moments where love, lust, and raw chemistry actually take the lead.
Also starring the likes of Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer, James Gandolfini and Samuel L Jackson, True Romance is considered one of Quentin Tarantino’s greatest ever movies, despite the fact that Tony Scott directed it.
Though Tarantino may not helm it, the film retains all of the director’s classic hallmarks, with a tight, snappy script and brutal, gory violence.
