Marvelous Margot

This season, Margot Robbie is set to dazzle as a silent movie star in Damien Chazelle's Babylon, and next year as a Barbie for the 21st century in Greta Gerwig's highly anticipated movie, which she's also producing. She opens up about her story-and Hollywood's

- By Rebecca Ford. Photographs by Mario Sorrenti

Margot Robbie wants to take me to New York. We're on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles, and she's giving me a walking tour of some places they shot Babylon, her upcoming movie about the vertiginous swirl that was Hollywood in the late 1920s. We're about to enter the New York back lot-faux neighborhoods used as stand-ins for various cities-when a security guard stops us with an "Excuse me, where are you heading?" We try saying "that way" and walk like we own the place. The guard isn't buying it. He asks what production we're with. This is where I expect my tour guide to say, "I'm Margot Robbie." Instead, she mumbles something about being with Babylon and "doing some post." Then her voice trails off. The security guard clearly doesn't recognize that standing in front of him is the Australian actor who brought Harley Quinn to life and was nominated for an Oscar for playing Tonya Harding. He tells us we have to get off the set because somebody's shooting. Robbie politely agrees. She laughs as we round the corner. "I should have a better cover story," she says. "You'd think I'd be better at that.' I actually have a hard time believing that Robbie runs up against hard nos very often. Not because of her looks-she's stunning, yes, that song's been sung ad nauseam-but because of the stories I've heard about her tenacity. Her first big job, on the Australian soap opera Neighbours, was supposed to be a guest stint, but she made such an impression that they kept her for three years. Robbie got her breakout role in The Wolf of Wall Street in part because she had the chutzpah to slap Leonardo DiCaprio during the audition. And she wrote an unsolicited letter to Quentin Tarantino saying she hoped to work with him one day, eventually finding herself on the set of Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood.