Margot Robbie made a splash with her breakthrough performance in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. However, even working with someone of that caliber doesn’t always mean the artist themselves are satisfied with their own performance. Robbie would earn her first Academy Award nomination after portraying the disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding in the film I, Tonya. It was when watching her performance in I, Tonya that Robbie had finally become impressed with her acting.
The Hollywood Reporter reveals the actress had gained much confidence after watching her performance in that movie that she reached out to Quentin Tarantino. Robbie recently had a BAFTA: A Life in Pictures tribute in her honor, and she would be the youngest actor to receive one. Robbie revealed at the event that she emailed Tarantino when she thought she was good enough.
“I, Tonya was the first time I watched a movie and went, ‘OK, I’m a good actor,'” Robbie told the audience. She felt she was “good enough” and “ready to reach out to my idols.” Working with the director was a “bucket list thing for me,” she reveals. She had contacted him, not knowing he was preparing for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at the time. Ultimately, she would be his only choice to portray Sharon Tate in that movie.
In a case of life imitating art, Robbie would pull the same act that Sharon Tate does in the movie by going to a screening of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to watch with the audience. She even went to the same theater that they filmed in for the scene in the film. “I just went there and watched it on a random Tuesday afternoon and sat in pretty much the same seat. I had pretty much the same experience [as Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood], even down to the fact that the person I bought the ticket off was like, ‘but you’re in the movie,’ and I was like, ‘I know.’” The ticket person even asked for a picture, just like in the movie. “I was like, ‘We’re practically doing the scene from the film’!”
Robbie can be seen in the upcoming Babylon, which opens on December 23.