‘If I had to wait for every dream role, I’d be waiting too long’

Margot Robbie tells Laura Harding why the hard work of having a production company is worth it

We’re in London to chat about new noir thriller Terminal, and for Margot Robbie it’s bringing back memories of when she lived in a flat-share in Clapham with her boyfriend (Tom Ackerley, who is now her husband) and their pals.

“London feels like my second home so I miss it all the time anyway, but right now when it’s summer, football is on, Wimbledon is on, Pride is here, it’s too many good things,” she says, laughing.

It was with Ackerley and their friend Josey Mcnamara, that she set up her production company, Luckychap Entertainment in 2014.

Their film, I, Tonya, a biopic of the disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding, bagged Robbie, 28, an Oscar nomination for the title role and saw Allison Janney win a little gold man for her supporting role as Harding’s mother.

Terminal was actually Luckychap’s first film, even though it has been released later, and was the reason the company happened in the first place.

“My roommates and I talked about starting a production company one day, and then we had a friend the boys knew who had written this script. When I read it and I was like, ‘Why don’t we make this? It’s so great! Why don’t we do it?’ And that is what kicked off the company.

“We learned a lot and it took quite a few years to get it all going and made, but here we are now and it was an incredible experience.”

Robbie says she had no idea what she was letting herself in for when she decided she wanted to make her own films, rather than wait for the perfect part to come along – despite a tenyear career in front of the camera which started with the role of Donna Freedman in Aussie soap Neighbours.

“I had to discover all the things you have to do as a producer. I’ve been on sets for the last ten years non-stop and I still underestimated it as a job.

0 Margot Robbie stars as femme fatale Annie in Terminal

“I really didn’t know the job was that difficult. I thought it was come to set and watch behind the monitors and make a few phone calls, send a few emails, blah blah blah.

“But it’s years of your life, years of it! It’s like, ‘Oh! I had better get the whole thing together then’. But it’s such a feeling of satisfaction when you do it, it’s very special.”

In Terminal, Robbie stars as a femme fatale with two aliases – the bombshell proprietress of an all-night café and a hitwoman with the task of bumping off the competition.

It’s set in a neon-drenched dystopian city and Robbie’s Annie speaks with a thick Cockney accent.

“I thought that is a cool, weird take on a femme fatale,” she says. “I love that she is very aware of what a man wants the femme fatale character to be and so subverts it.

“I actually don’t know if I could act in an Aussie accent any more,” she admits. “I haven’t done it in so long. I haven’t done it since Neighbours, that was the last time.”

Robbie learned early on that if she wants a role, she has to make it happen, but landing that best actress Oscar nomination for I, Tonya certainly didn’t hurt.

“It probably did change my career. When you’re so close to it, it’s harder to notice things like that.

“But it’s a really exciting time, doing the company, acting on this kind of level now – I’m in such a fortunate position.”

She has already wrapped production on the 1930s Dust Bowl thriller, Dreamland, in which she plays a fugitive bank robber, and she will also star in and produce Bad Monkeys, based on Matt Ruff ’s 2007 novel of the same name, playing a woman arrested for murder.

And after she reprises her role of Harley Quinn for comic book movie Suicide Squad 2, she will star and executive produce Gotham City Sirens, which will focus on the top female villains from DC Comics, including Quinn.

If that is not enough, she is also due to play the title role in and produce a Maid Marian film, following the heroine as she picks up the cause to lead her people into a pivotal war after Robin Hood dies.

“That is the wonderful thing about producing,” she says. “It’s getting to build the projects and not waiting for them to come along.

“I’m so impatient, if I had to wait for every dream role to come along I would never…” she tails off briefly. “I would be waiting too long.”

“I really didn’t know the job was that difficult … But it’s years of your life”