The moment Margot Robbie knew she wanted to be an actor and the movies that shaped her
Since Margot Robbie’s breakthrough in Martin Scorsese’s 2013 picture The Wolf of Wall Street, she has become one of the most sought-after actors of the past ten years and certainly one of the best-paid. But what about Robbie’s early inspirations and the moment she knew she wanted to enter the film industry?
When asked how old she was when she knew she wanted to be an actor by Lynn Hirschberg, Robbie said: “I had this conversation with my mum recently, and she said, ‘Do you remember the day you told me you were going to be an actor?’ And I said, ‘No’. That feels like a pretty important moment, and I don’t remember it at all.”
It’s funny that Robbie would not remember such a pivotal moment in her life, but thankfully, her mother does. “I must have said it when I was doing my first job, so I was 16,” she added. “Of course, I loved movies my whole life, but I never considered acting as a job. I think my family were well aware that I was quite a performer when I was a kid because I would constantly re-enact movies.”
Like many of us, Robbie’s first introduction to films was through the endless watching and rewinding of VHS tapes. She said: “We had X amount of videos at home, and I would just watch them on repeat no matter what they were, and mum would be cooking dinner or whatever, and I would re-enact them and go on and on and on, and she would be like, ‘Are you making this up?’ I’d say, ‘No, it’s a movie.’ And she’d be like, ‘How do you remember it?’”
As for the movies that stood out to her, Robbie remembers: “There were a lot of Goldie Hawn films like Private Benjamin, one of my all-time favourites.” Goldie Hawn was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Private Benjamin, so it’s easy to see why Robbie admired her so much as a child.
However, despite her love for Goldie Hawn, Robbie admits that “The Fifth Element was always [her] favourite”. The film is Luc Besson’s 1997 science-fiction flick starring Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Milla Jovovich and Chris Tucker, and, even if Robbie loves it, it is one of the more critically divisive films in the genre.
Then Robbie named another 1990s classic as one of her childhood favourites. “The Fifth Element and Robin Hood: Men in Tights were always my two childhood movies,” she said. “In hindsight, Robin Hood: Men in Tights was maybe a little bit inappropriate to love at five years old because there are some sexual jokes in there, but I loved it.”
Listen to Robbie discuss her formative years of cinema, below.
