Aussie actress Margot Robbie first left jaws on the floor after her breakout performance opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in 2013's "The Wolf of Wall Street," but she's proved she has staying power.
The 26-year-old is dominating Hollywood with roles in "The Legend of Tarzan" and "Suicide Squad" as the perfectly unhinged comic-book character Harley Quinn. While "Squad" has received less-than-stellar reviews, Robbie is the clear star — critics and fans can't get enough of her Quinn.
She's not slowing down any time soon, either. Here's how she became a Hollywood star:
Born in 1990, Margot Robbie grew up on her grandparents' farm on Australia's Gold Coast.
She loves to surf and bought her first surfboard at a garage sale when she was 10.
Sunset surf in San Juan del Sur
Source: Yahoo Canada
As a teen, she made sandwiches at a Subway in Melbourne. Six months after Robbie landed her first major acting role, the company hired her for a commercial.
After graduating from high school, Robbie cold-called producers of Australia's longest-running soap opera, "Neighbours."
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
Robbie landed a guest role as Donna Freedman, a free-spirited and confident teenager. She stayed on the show for three years.
When she wasn't on set, Robbie took acting classes and worked with a dialogue coach to perfect her American accent. She found an agent and left for Hollywood in 2011.
Robbie touched down just as "pilot season" began. She auditioned for every major TV network and won a central role on the one-season ABC drama "Pan Am."
She joined an amateur hockey league, playing right wing, after moving to the states. "I always wanted to play ice hockey back in Australia, but we didn't have any ice where I lived," she told Film.com. "I'm definitely the worst on the team."
Guess which one is mine... #photoshoot #bleedblue #NYR @nyrangers
Source: Film.com
Her love for the New York Rangers was born.
Bummed we lost tonight but I still ❤️ my @NYRangers! #NYRplayoffs
Source: Film.com
The month "Pan Am" got the ax, Robbie received a script for "The Wolf of Wall Street." Director Martin Scorsese reportedly sent a script to every unknown actress in Hollywood.
Source: New York Magazine
During her audition, Leonardo DiCaprio started to improvise and she struggled to keep up. "I thought, I've got moments left in the room, I've got to do something," Robbie thought. "So for the next scene, which was a fight, I got a little lost in the moment ..."
Source: GQ UK
"At the end of the scene, I was meant to walk away, but instead I slapped him in the face and said, 'F--- you!'" Robbie remembers. "There was this stunned silence, which felt like an eternity, and then they all burst out laughing. I said, 'I'm so sorry,' and Leo said, 'That was brilliant. Hit me in the face again.'" She got the part.
Source: GQ UK
The movie catapulted Robbie's career. The scene below, in which her character, Naomi, brings Jordan to his knees in agony by withholding sex, remains one of its most memorable moments.
"The Wolf of Wall Street" racked up five Oscar nominations.
Robbie followed up her blockbuster success with two indie flicks: "Suite Française" and "Z for Zachariah."
Robbie was next cast in the dark rom-com "Focus," opposite Will Smith.
Robbie popped up in best picture nominee "The Big Short." In it, she explained collateralized debt obligations while in a bathtub.
Source: New York Daily News
This is the year of Margot Robbie, though.
She was in the war comedy "Whisky Foxtrot Tango." Tina Fey stars as a war correspondent with a dark sense of humor and a thirst for adventure, and Robbie plays a British TV journalist who befriends her.
She starred as Jane Porter in the "Tarzan" remake "The Legend of Tarzan," also starring Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, and "True Blood" actor Alexander Skarsgard.
After first, she didn't want to play Jane. "There’s no way I was going to play the damsel in distress," she told Vogue. But then she read the script and said "It just felt very epic and big and magical in some way. I haven’t done a movie like that."
Source: Vogue
Robbie was the center of a controversial Vanity Fair article titled "Welcome to the Summer of Margot Robbie" that was criticized for being sexist toward Robbie and patronizing toward Australia. "America is so far gone, we have to go to Australia to find a girl next door. ... She is blonde but dark at the roots. She is tall but only with the help of certain shoes," Rich Cohen wrote in the opening.
Source: Vanity Fair
Robbie eventually responded, agreeing that the article was "really weird." "I remember thinking, that was a really odd interview. I don't know how that's going to come out," she told Australian TV show "The Project." "And then when I read it, I was like yeah, the tone of this is really weird. Like, I don't really know what he's trying to get at."
Source: CNN
She had another odd run-in with media when paparazzi captured her wiping out on her surfboard. On "The Tonight Show," she told Jimmy Fallon that she was "dying with laughter" over the shot. She posted the photo herself on her Instagram, thanking the "creepy pap" for taking it.
Source: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Daily Mail
Last on the books for 2016 is "Suicide Squad."
"Suicide Squad" is based on a comic book with the most infamous supervillains in the DC Comics universe, including Jared Leto as The Joker, Will Smith as Deadshot, and Cara Delevingne as Enchantress.
Robbie plays the cheery and psychotic Harley Quinn, Joker's girlfriend and henchwoman. Robbie told MTV that she didn't even audition for the role, "which is a real step up as an actor, when you get offered things."
Source: MTV
Robbie told Cineplex that playing the "creepy, violent, crazy" Harley is "fun." "It's the fun of living vicariously through someone who is doing things that I would never do in real life," she said.
Source: Cineplex
Leto sent Robbie a rat to get into character as the Clown Prince of Crime. Robbie keeps it as a pet, named Rat Rat, and feeds it organic berries from Whole Foods.
Source: Cineplex
Her bond with her other costars is a little more normal, as they often snapped photos together while doing press tours. Less normal: She gave Delevingne a tattoo.
Source: The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon
The first reviews for "Suicide Squad" came in and they aren't very flattering. Except that most agree that Robbie is a standout. Tech Insider's Kirsten Acuna wrote, "The real heart and scene stealer of 'Suicide Squad' is Robbie's Harley Quinn, but that shouldn't be a surprise."
Source: Business Insider, Tech Insider
It doesn't seem like she's leaving the character behind any time soon. She is set to star as Quinn and produce a spin-off film.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
She's got even more projects in the works, including the noir thriller "Terminal," voicing a character in Dreamworks' "Larrkins," portraying the notorious ice skater Tonya Harding in "I, Tonya," and playing A.A. Milne's wife in "Goodbye Christopher Robbin."
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
And even with all her success, Robbie still lives with four roommates in a London flat.
Source: INSIDER
It's clear Margot Robbie is a rising star to watch.
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