Margot Robbie's Accent Game Will Blow You Away
Margot Robbie has made quite the career for herself. She's been racking up movie and TV show credits since 2008, starting with small roles in TV series like "Neighbours" and "Pan Am," as well as indie horror films like "I.C.U." Since these humble beginnings, however, Robbie has grown as an actor and played a wide variety of roles, including her iconic performance as Harley Quinn in no less than three DC movies. You can attribute a lot of her versatility as a performer to her ability to master different accents.
Robbie's own natural accent is Australian, as she was born and raised in Queensland, Australia. But surprisingly, her parents are actually Scottish (via E! Online). Starting life with a bit of a leg up in accent diversity might be a contributing factor to why she's so easily able to master roles that appeal to American, British, Australian, and many other English-speaking audiences. Here's more about the many different accents that Robbie has conquered in her career so far.
She took a spiritual visit to Brooklyn for The Wolf of Wall Street
One of Margot Robbie's first big breaks in the entertainment industry came when she was cast as Naomi Lapaglia in "The Wolf of Wall Street." Her character is the second wife of main character Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), whose hypersexual persona and taste for the finer things in life make her an appropriate partner for Belfort. Sadly, their marriage isn't a happy one. She ends up divorcing him after putting up with a lot of abuse.
The character Robbie plays in the movie is from Brooklyn, and the actor went the extra mile in order to make sure she got the accent right for her part. According to an interview she did with Absolute Radio, Robbie has her acting coach Nancy Banks to thank for the tutelage. Her coach recommended that she pretend she had just gotten her nails done and that they were still wet. In the interview, while demonstrating the technique, Robbie slowly and flawlessly transforms into her character for a few brief moments before switching back to her natural form of speech.
Her standard American accent is flawless
For those Margot Robbie fans who haven't seen her play anyone other than Harley Quinn, you're missing out. Robbie has a lot of range as an actor, and it really shows when she plays roles that require a standard American accent. One of the first opportunities she had to do this was while playing criminal intern Jess in "Focus" alongside Will Smith. The two actors play grifters in the film, but there's an air of mystery about each character's true intentions that doesn't get solved until the very end.
According to a roundtable interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Robbie went above and beyond in order to prepare herself to become a thief for her role in "Focus." She worked with an acting coach and a dialect coach as she does for most other roles, but she also worked with a movement coach and even learned how to pick people's pockets from an actual, professional pickpocket.
Robbie's strategy for honing her American accent developed further as time went on. For a later role that also required a straight American accent, "Bombshell," Robbie told Variety that she studied other people's accents to perfect her own. In particular, she emulated Reese Witherspoon from "Legally Blonde," while Robbie also watched videos of Katherine Harris, Florida's former secretary of state, for research, saying, "I just love the sounds of her vowels — they're incredible."
She doesn't have to work that hard to sound like she's from Down Under
Funnily enough, Margot Robbie doesn't get to use her natural accent that often when she's on set. Many of her earlier roles were locally produced in her home country, so she didn't have to pretend to be someone she wasn't in order to satisfy those target audiences, but once she hit the mainstream, that changed for the most part. Luckily, she got to play herself in a short cameo in a somewhat forgotten film from 2015.
It's called "The Big Short," and it's a dark comedy about the U.S. sub-prime mortgage loan crisis which nearly collapsed the economy in 2008. Robbie's small and uncredited part is actually central to the plot of the film. In her scene, she explains — while drinking champagne in a bubble bath — what sub-prime mortgages are and why they were a bad idea. Fortunately, Robbie was allowed to do so while speaking in her native accent, which probably surprised many of her casual fans who had never heard her speak outside of her more popular acting roles.
She borrowed accents from multiple sources for her role as Harley Quinn
As it turns out, Margot Robbie's past roles in movies like "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "Focus" were great practice for what was to come next. By the time Warner Bros. was ready to start casting "Suicide Squad," she was already on people's radar. According to MTV, Robbie was offered the part of Harley Quinn without even having to audition, and thanks to "Focus," the producers already knew that Robbie had chemistry with Will Smith, who plays Deadshot. Robbie ended up filling the supervillain role perfectly. While Robbie's experience in "The Wolf of Wall Street" was helpful, she did things a little differently for what would turn out to be the most well-known role of her career (thus far, anyhow).
According to USA Today, Robbie started building her Quinn accent based on the version of the character from "Batman: The Animated Series," which is the first media she appears in outside of the comic books. But Robbie also knew she needed to add some depth to the character to make her as edgy and serious as her "Suicide Squad" role required. For this, the actor would listen to scenes with Karen Hill (Lorraine Bracco) from "Goodfellas" on her iPod, because she felt like that character was the perfect embodiment of a serious Brooklyn accent.
Robbie mastered the Pacific Northwest accent for I, Tonya
Margot Robbie has had to master many different countries' accents during her career, including a few different variations of the American accent, and in 2017, the actor got to take a crack at a rural Pacific Northwest accent in the film "I, Tonya." The movie is loosely based on the real life of Tonya Harding, the dishonored figure skater who was on her way to possibly winning Olympic medals before she hired someone to injure her competition, Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver).
In the film, Robbie does a fantastic job of convincing the audience that she's a poor, underprivileged woman from the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, chasing her dream of becoming one of the best female figure skaters in the world. Robbie's voice coach for this movie was Liz Himelstein, who was basically on set the whole time, giving her tips here and there to perfect her speech patterns (via Vulture). It wasn't just that Robbie had to master one accent for the role, she had to change her voice constantly to accurately portray the character at different stages of life, from her mid-teens to middle age. It was pretty demanding, but in the end, the plethora of awards and nominations the film earned speaks for itself.
She can cleverly mimic those who live across the pond
One of Margot Robbie's best roles with a British accent is that of Queen Elizabeth I in "Mary Queen of Scots." Those of you who are familiar with British and Scottish history probably already know how the plot plays out. But for those who don't, the basic premise is that Mary, the Catholic queen of Scotland (played by Saoirse Ronan), and Elizabeth I, the Protestant queen of England, both have arguably equal claims to the English throne. Although the women grow to respect one another, Elizabeth orders Mary's execution based on rumors that she has been conspiring with her enemies in order to have her assassinated. After Elizabeth's eventual death, Mary's son James (Andrew Rothney) becomes heir to the throne of both countries.
It certainly helps that Robbie's husband is British film producer Tom Ackerley (via E! Online), but even with this help and assistance from different vocal coaches over the years, there are still some spots in which Robbie struggles with her English accent. This Insider analysis with a dialect coach pointed out a couple of weak moments in the film where the actress slips back into her native Australian speech during some emotionally tense moments. In an interview with Hey U Guys, Robbie also admitted that words like "no" and "home" still trip her up most of the time.