The Quentin Tarantino movie Margot Robbie adores
Meeting your heroes can often be a double-edged sword, never mind actively collaborating with them. However, Margot Robbie experienced no such issues when she partnered up with Quentin Tarantino on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
In fact, part of the reason she was cast as Sharon Tate in the filmmaker’s revisionist love letter to Los Angeles was that she penned one of her own. In it, she expressed her admiration for the Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Django Unchained writer and director’s back catalogue.
As fate would have it, Tarantino was already being urged by several people close to him to cast her as Sharon Tate following her mainstream breakthrough in The Wolf of Wall Street. Robbie penning a glowing note declaring her dedication to working together just made the process much easier.
“I wrote him and said, ‘I adore your films, and I would love to work with you in some capacity, or any capacity,'” she admitted. Fortunately, Tarantino felt exactly the same and couldn’t envision anyone else playing Tate once the screenplay began coming together.
“I mean, she was such perfect casting that I didn’t have a second choice. Right towards the end of finishing up the script, out of the blue, I got a letter, and it was from Margot,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “She said she’s a big fan of my films and she would love an opportunity to be in one of my movies. I took that as a good sign.”
Robbie’s love of Tarantino’s back catalogue stretches much further back than that, though, to the extent that she walked down the aisle to the True Romance soundtrack. She’d named Tony Scott’s twisting tale of star-crossed lovers as her favourite movie of all time and couldn’t think of a more fitting musical selection to play in the background when she was tying the knot.
The actor and Tom Ackerley wed in December of 2016, long before she’d even been cast in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, so it was the realisation of a long-held dream for Robbie to star in a Tarantino flick. When she did, she ended up winning widespread praise for her work, in what was a tricky performance to pull off given the ultimate fate that befell Tate in real life.
On the surface, True Romance doesn’t come across as the type of film that would have people dreaming of walking down the aisle on their wedding day to its musical accompaniments, given the violence and profanity that’s prevalent throughout its 118-minute running time. Still, Robbie couldn’t think of anything better or more fitting.
Three years after tying the knot, she’d brought things full circle by playing a major role in one of its writer’s movies.
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