MASSIVE WORK
The star of such hits as Bombshell and Suicide Squad has gone from couchsurfing as a jobbing actress in Australia to working alongside superstars like Leonardo Dicaprio, Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Brad Pitt.
She even runs her own production company worth an estimated €27million – and it’s all down to determination to succeed and a work ethic she honed on hit soap Neighbours.
The Aussie says playing girl-next-door Donna Brown on Ramsay Street was a vital part of her ride to crack Tinseltown.
Margot says: “Neighbours is like boot camp. It is a rite of passage.
“There were 30 cast members from eight to 70 and you all stay in one room together. It’s not like America where you have trailers and omelette chefs.
INFLUENTIAL
“I remember asking, ‘Do you do just this job? And you can support a family and send your kids to school and pay off your mortgage just by acting?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah’. I thought, ‘Well then, I want to do that. I’ll just do acting then’.”
Last year Margot was voted one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world by Time magazine after a 2020 Academy Award nomination for Bombshell, about sex harassment in the US media.
This year, as the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Margot starred once more as the anti-hero Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey.
Next year, she will reprise the role for the Suicide Squad sequel, will be the voice of Flopsy in Peter Rabbit 2 and is set to film a screen version of Barbie.
She is also lined up for a new Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. And behind the lens, she will produce Promising Young Women, starring Carey Mulligan.
It’s a hefty workload. But Margot maintains a laid-back approach to life.
She grew up the third of four children on a fruit farm on Queensland’s Gold Coast and was raised by her “amazing” single mum Sarie Kessler, a physiotherapist.
The star has little contact with her father, former farm owner Doug Robbie.
Margot left home at 17 to pursue acting and was snowboarding in Canada when she got the call to appear on Neighbours.
Talking during a chat about B ombsh el l with Siriusxm online radio service, she adds: “I had finished high school and was trying to find couches to sleep on, just trying to keep my head above water, working constantly.”
Her confidence grew on Neighbours, as did a desire for pastures new.
She adds: “I didn’t want to play the same role for too long
Margot as Sharon Tate in Tarantino hit
Margot found fame in Neighbours
US break as air stewardess in Pan Am
Playing skater Tonya Harding because I could already tell I was starting to play myself a little bit. My choices were to stay for decades the way some cast members have, which would give you a lovely life in Melbourne, or try and make the transition to America. “I was spending on acting courses and dialect coaching so that I could make my American accent perfect. “I had to get a team in place so I could get with the best casting agents and not waste any time.” The investment paid off. In 2012 Margot was cast in TV series Pan Am, about 1960s cabin crew. But it was her role a year later in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street – which she won after an unscripted slap to