Margot Robbie’s favourite movie scores of all time: “It gets me into reality”
According to Margot Robbie, perfect moments can be made even more special with the right score, because after all, she walked down the aisle to the score from True Romance.
It makes sense when you consider that Robbie has essentially built a career on character-driven roles, with most of them looking deeper into the dynamics of society and the perils of female-focused experiences in a range of different scenarios. From those at the bottom of the psychosis chain (Harley Quinn) to the more complex explorations of societal misogyny (Barbie), Robbie has carved a special position as one of Hollywood’s most important voices.
And it’s not just the themes that make her important; it’s how emotionally available she has always been, which, although it might not seem like it at times, is actually a fairly rare trait in the industry. But with most roles she takes on, Robbie feels a strong connection to the characters and stories, which, in turn, makes her performances more believable.
For instance, recently discussing the moment her screenplay for Wuthering Heights landed in her lap, she recalled how the script “absolutely wrecked” her, mainly because the version of Cathy that Emerald Fennell created made her feel like she had been made specifically for her. “I felt like…not like she’s mine, but like I both understood her and didn’t, in a way that drew me to her. It’s this puzzle you have to work out,” she told Vogue.
In this way, for Robbie, it’s not always about using the art form as escapism but using the complexities of storytelling to feel closer to yourself and the world around you. It’s an interesting observation, but one that makes Robbie a better actor than most of her peers – because she’s able to remain present in ways they can’t, existing somewhere between fiction and reality whenever she steps into someone else’s shoes.
Maybe that’s also because Robbie surrounds herself with like-minded people, like Fennell, who always go into a project driven by the emotional core of storytelling. After all, while creating Wuthering Heights, Fennell said she wanted it to be this generation’s Titanic, an unforgettable emotional rollercoaster that you remember for years to come, purely because of how you felt in the moment.
A lot of Robbie’s time is spent like this – grounding herself emotionally. It’s another reason why she loves to set movie scores to certain situations, because they make her feel both somewhere else and completely in the moment. “Classic FM is my favourite radio station,” she once revealed to the station. “Every morning I wake up to The Lark Ascending – that’s my alarm! It just gets me out of sleep and into reality for the day in a really beautiful way.”
She also said the scores for The Last of the Mohicans and The Lord of the Rings were among her all-time favourites, and that listening to scores was a big thing in her life, evidently because they help to clear her mind and ready her for whatever it is she has on her to-do list on any given day.
Most actors use music for this reason, but what makes Robbie’s relationship with it so special is that she uses it as a tool for immersion, whether to soundtrack real moments in her life or as a backdrop to whatever else she’s focusing on, and in each scenario, it comes down to that emotional core, and feeling as close to your own world as is physically possible.
