‘I’m convinced I’m a terrible actor’
in the week Margot Robbie received a Screen Actors Guild nomination, the star made a surprise confession; she still suffers from imposter syndrome.
‘ The week leading up to playing any character, I have a huge crisis of faith,’ she said. ‘I convince myself I’m a terrible actor and I’ll never pull it off. I always think: “I’m not even any good at this.”’
This is the same woman who received widespread acclaim for The Wolf Of Wall Street and I, Tonya (for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress), and is now starring alongside Saoirse Ronan in the highly-anticipated Mary, Queen Of Scots.
Speaking at a Screen Actors Guild event last week in the US, she added that her husband Tom Ackerley, with whom she runs her production company, Lucky Chap, is ‘very patient’ with her, revealing that every time she questions her acting ability, he says, ‘OK, you know you say this every time.’ But after getting ‘hysterical’, and saying, ‘It feels different, this is the time,’ she relaxes once filming begins. ‘After the first day on set I calm down and he’s like “told you,” she revealed. ‘He’s so calm and understanding. I’m… not.’
Still, Margot confided that she sometimes felt insecure on the set of Mary Queen Of Scots. ‘Every time I saw Saoirse be amazing, I’d think “Holy shit, I need to lift my game.” She would say, “I don’t know this scene yet,” but then she’d be off, no script, Scottish accent, speaking perfect French and I’m trundling along behind her in awe.’
The Australian actor previously told the BBC that she thought, ‘she wasn’t the right actress for the film,’ as she didn’t have a degree and she isn’t classically trained. ‘I thought I was the wrong actress for this; I’m the wrong actress to play a queen,’ she said. But director Josie Rourke convinced her otherwise, telling her, ‘I don’t want you to play a queen, I want you to play a young woman.’
‘ That unlocked the character for me in a big way,’ she added. ‘From then it was really about finding the humanity and vulnerability beneath the façade.’ Mary, Queen Of Scots is released 18 January