When Margot Robbie ended up on the wrong end of Clint Eastwood’s iconic glare
As one of the most recognisable actors in the world, Margot Robbie has been requested by some of the greats of the directing world. She teamed up with Damian Chazelle for Babylon, Martin Scorsese for The Wolf of Wall Street, and Quentin Tarantino for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. There’s also the small matter of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, which only made a billion dollars and took the world by storm.
One director she’s never worked with is the legendary Clint Eastwood. The former cowboy might be the best part of 100 years old, but that hasn’t stopped him working alongside a number of Robbie’s contemporaries. Maybe the reason they haven’t collaborated can be traced back to an awkward incident at the 2015 Academy Awards ceremony, one that left the Australian staring at the floor in shame.
Robbie described her ordeal to the hosts of the Shazam Top 20 radio show, whose names she embarrassingly couldn’t remember in a later segment. “I went backstage to present an award and afterwards did an interview,” she said, as reported by the Daily Mail. “They gave me this little bottle of champagne for the interview and I went back to my seat. We were in an ad break and I opened it and it popped really loudly. Clint Eastwood was sitting right in front of me and turned around and glared at me!”
As she mentioned, Robbie was at the show to present the ‘Technical Achievement’ award alongside Miles Teller. Eastwood was there because his movie, American Sniper, was up for the ‘Best Picture’ prize. Given that he’d spent the last year or so working on a movie all about guns, Robbie is lucky that Eastwood didn’t go full ‘Man with No Name’ on her after hearing a loud bang. He might have been in his mid-80s at the time, but you’d be a fool not to back him in a scrap.
How did the I, Tonya star react to seeing one of the most acclaimed actors-turned-directors of all time giving her the evils? “I kind of ducked my head,” she revealed. “I don’t know if he was glaring cause it’s kind of the facial expression he always has – so he might have been appraising the situation or maybe he wanted some, I don’t know.” To be fair, Eastwood has made a career out of looking like he’s about to kill someone. You can understand why she might have been confused about her true feelings.
This wouldn’t be the last time Robbie and Eastwood came face-to-face at the Oscars. In 2019, the former was up for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ for her role in Bombshell. Also in the came category was Kathy Bates. She had been nominated for playing the mother of the title character in Richard Jewell, a film directed by – you guessed it – Clint Eastwood. This could have led to a tense showdown between the former rivals, but alas, Laura Dern went and ruined everything by winning the award for her role in Marriage Story. Spoilsport.
Hopefully Eastwood was able to put the champagne incident behind him and forgive his one-time enemy. Maybe the two could reconcile and work together at some point, although Robbie had better be careful. Eastwood is a bit of a prankster and could be out for revenge. Stay tuned for further updates.
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