As an A-list actor and successful film producer, it's safe to say that Margot Robbie is one
of Hollywood's biggest players these days.
However, like several other women in Hollywood, Robbie has unfortunately had to face a lot
of sexism and misogyny throughout her career.
Here are a few times she totally shut it down.
In 2016, Margot Robbie graced the cover of Vanity Fair for what was supposed to be a
profile about her rise to fame and success found in several films that year.
Instead, the piece ended up causing controversy for how it was written, with the magazine
and contributing editor Rich Cohen being widely criticized for the article's seemingly sexist
tone, which frequently commented on Robbie's looks over her achievements.
In the opening paragraph alone, for example, Cohen wrote,
"[Robbie] can be sexy and composed even while naked but only in character."
Elsewhere in the piece, Cohen noted Robbie's "painfully blue eyes," and commented that
her "beauty and speed of ascent mask her ambition."
Not only was the profile called misogynistic and even "creepy" by fans, but Robbie herself
felt the need to speak out against it.
As she reflected on the Australian TV show, The Project,
"I remember thinking, 'That was a really odd interview, I don't know how that's going to
come out.'
Then when I read it and I was like, 'Yeah, the tone of this is really weird, I don't
really know what he's trying to get at or play at.'"
While Robbie called out the writer for his angle, she admitted that she didn't expect
the "uproar" the interview received.
She explained,
"I've read far more offensive, far more sexist, insulting, derogatory, disgusting things on
a daily basis.
I don't know, maybe I'm desensitized to it now."
While Margot Robbie may be happily wed to screenwriter and fellow producer Tom Ackerley
since December 2016, she doesn't necessarily always want to be asked about how married
life is — especially when at an event or press conference to discuss accomplishments
in her career or a film she had worked on.
It's also a question that male actors and producers never seem to get as much as women
do.
Robbie opened up to Page Six in 2017 about how this annoyed her and how getting married
shouldn't be seen as an accomplishment for women.
The Birds of Prey star dished,
"I was doing a press conference and they keep asking me what it was like to be married,
and I said, 'Being married is not my achievement.
My achievement is producing this film and having a producing deal with a major studio
— that is my achievement.'
And everyone shut up after that.
It was really nice."
That's not to say that Robbie isn't enjoying being married.
As she told Net-a-Porter,
"Being married is actually the most fun ever, life got way more fun somehow.
I have a responsibility being someone's wife, I want to be better."
Instead, it appears as though she just doesn't want her status as a wife to overshadow what
she has worked hard for professionally, which is understandable.
Margot Robbie does not want to be described as a "bombshell," and she pushed back against
that label in an interview with Vogue in 2019.
Not only did she believe that the term put an emphasis on her looks over her talent,
but the actor-producer also seemed to feel like it's not even an accurate way to truly
describe her.
Robbie, who starred in 2019's Bombshell, dished that while it may seem like a compliment,
when it comes to being called a "bombshell," she revealed,
"I hate that word.
I hate it — so much.
I feel like a brat saying that because there are worse things, but I'm not a bombshell.
I'm not someone who walks in a room and the record stops and people turn like, 'Look at
that woman.'
That doesn't happen.
People who know me, if they had to sum me up in one word, I don't know what that word
would be, but I'm certain it would not be 'bombshell.'"
It's clear that Robbie wants to be seen for her talent as an actor or for being a good
producer rather than just for being beautiful, which seems to be something that a lot of
women in Hollywood have to deal with.
Margot Robbie has also called out the interviewers who constantly ask if she's trying to get
pregnant or when she plans to have a baby.
It's a question that she's apparently been pestered with ever since she got married back
in 2016.
Like the unwanted question about marriage, this is also one that women seem to be subjected
to far more often than men in the industry — and frankly, Robbie has long been sick
of it.
"Everyone keeps asking, everyone's like, 'You're married now, you have to have kids.'
I was like, 'You don't have to."
While promoting the period piece, Mary Queen of Scots, in 2019, Robbie told the Radio Times,
"I got married, and the first question in almost every interview is, 'Babies?
When are you having one?'
I'm so angry that there's this social contract.
You're married, now have a baby.
Don't presume.
I'll do what I'm going to do."
Robbie also told Net-a-Porter,
"If I'm looking into my future 30 years from now, I want to see a big Christmas dinner
with tons of kids there.
Definitely not at the moment.
That's 100 percent certain.
I can't cope with two puppies, let alone children!"
Margot Robbie has also opened up about the sexism she's faced as a producer in the film
industry, and even publicly called out male colleagues who brushed her off in the past
when it came to certain topics that they may have felt she couldn't handle.
In 2020, the multi-talent explained to Glamour UK,
"When people are asking a question and I have the answer, they so readily will turn to my
producing partners who are guys and ask them.
'It's a finance thing, so I will ask the guy.'
And they are like, 'Actually, she is the one with the answer, you should ask her!'"
Robbie blamed the insult on, quote, "the societal construct we have grown up knowing," adding,
"[Sexism is] naturally ingrained in people — even if you are the one who should be
dictating the decisions — that they turn to the closest, eldest male in the room and
direct the question at them."
Yet, Robbie did feel like things were finally changing for the better for women in show
business.
She dished,
"I think the interesting thing now is that everyone is so conscious of that and they
often catch themselves.
I think people want to embrace the idea of equality."
And if they don't catch themselves, it's clear Margot Robbie will confront them for it.
'Who's a voice in Hollywood that people should be listening to?"
"Women.
All of them."
Margot Robbie has had to defend some roles she's taken on as an actor from sexist labels.
She was criticized, in particular, for Harley Quinn being portrayed in a seemingly sexist
way in 2016's Suicide Squad.
However, the star dismissed the accusations, saying at the London premiere,
"It's so rare as an actress that you get given a role this messed up and gritty and funny.
[David Ayer] didn't write it like a chick but he wrote it for a chick and I'm grateful."
Robbie eventually would make Harley Quinn a symbol of female empowerment when she reprised
the role for 2020's Birds of Prey, which she herself produced.
She told Vogue that she decided to make Quinn's outfits, quote, "less male gaze–y" and gave
Quinn an all-women gang, who weren't afraid to get their hands dirty.
As Robbie told Glamour UK,
"I think there's a misconception that women don't like action films or can't handle an
R rating."
The actor-producer also stood up for herself when it came to criticism over the lack of
speaking lines she had as Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.
Robbie seemed to disagree that it was an insult as the main female character, explaining at
a panel event,
"To really show those wonderful sides of her, I think, could be adequately done without
speaking.
[...] "[I] actually really appreciated the exercise and felt that I could deliver what
I wanted to onscreen."
When it comes to being a woman in Hollywood, Margot Robbie has a lot to say.
She responded to the sexism she's faced in a speech delivered at the 2018 Women in Film
Awards.
In what she called a "letter to Hollywood," Robbie revealed,
"Being a woman in Hollywood means you will probably have to fight through degrading situations
and will be offered chauvinistic roles by men who think that that's all anybody wants
to see us play."
Robbie also addressed how she's taking on that issue by creating more female-driven
content, adding,
"I already work with a ton of female writers who are brilliant, and I want to work with
female directors.
I really want to work with actresses my own age.
I'm trying so hard to get projects up and running with an ensemble of young female characters,
because that's my life, my group of girls, we're a gang and we roll together and I'm
like: 'Why is that not reflected in film?'"
It's even the reason she started a production company.
Robbie later told the Radio Times,
"I wasn't seeing many scripts where I wanted to play the female role.
[...] The female roles are always a catalyst for the male story, and that's unsatisfying.
So I was like, 'Well, we'll start making our own films, because we can't just sit around
for ever and wait for them to come along.'"
"Margot Robbie: Mogul!
Right?"
"I don't know about that."
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