Margot Robbie names her favourite Stanley Kubrick movie
From her humble beginnings in Australian soap operas to worldwide fame playing the titular character in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, Margot Robbie has taken Hollywood by storm over the past few years.
Robbie received her mainstream breakthrough when she starred in Martin Scorsese’s 2013 hit The Wolf of Wall Street, playing Naomi, the wife of Leonardo DiCaprio’s main character, Jordan Belfort. She was just 22 at the time, but she impressed critics with her performance as the flirtatious, defiant, and bold character, holding her own against veteran actor DiCaprio, with whom she most often shared the screen.
After the success of the movie, Robbie started to appear in more commercially successful films, such as Suicide Squad, I, Tonya, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Babylon and Asteroid City. Yet, acting clearly isn’t enough for Robbie. In 2014, she founded the production company LuckyChap Entertainment, which has been responsible for many popular movies, including two of 2023’s most-talked-about films: Barbie and Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn.
While looking for new projects to produce, Robbie keeps in mind the films she herself loves. Talking to A.frame, she once picked out some of her favourite movies, specifically those that inspired her approach as a producer. She selected an expansive range of titles, including Bob Fosse’s Cabaret and John Waters’ Cry-Baby, as well as highlighting her favourite Stanley Kubrick movie.
The filmmaker, widely regarded as one of cinema’s most influential, possessed a near-flawless filmography, with films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon and The Shining under his belt. Robbie explained, “Our dream is to make culture-shifting, big cinema. And I feel like Kubrick did that again and again and again in so many unexpected ways.”
“So, we could probably list every Kubrick film, but I particularly love Dr. Strangelove, because it’s just my personal favourite,” she added.
The movie, released in 1964, starred Peter Sellers in several roles and takes a satirical approach to exploring nuclear warfare. Robbie thinks the film is “absolutely hilarious”, but she also appreciates how it involves heavy topics that, especially at the time, were very relevant.
”It’s taking subject matter, like the Cold War and nuclear holocaust, and making it funny,” she said. “It feels like something that everyone would’ve been like, ‘No, don’t do it. Don’t touch it. It’s too soon.’ I mean, it was too soon back then!”
Thus, even though none of the projects that Robbie has produced have the same vibe as Dr Strangelove, the movie’s ambitious nature and political relevance were a huge source of inspiration. “I feel like something like that also fits the mold of the kind of film that we’d get excited and want to make. And it’s just so iconic.”
Kubrick’s influence is most obvious in Barbie when the emergence of the doll is told through a parody of the opening sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey, with little girls throwing baby dolls instead of apes with bones. Yet, Robbie revealed that there was some less obvious influence, too. “Actually, our boardroom in Barbie was based on the War Room from Dr. Strangelove“.
