Wolfish for Margot Robbie

When it comes to the under-forty set of modern actors, few impress me more than Margot Robbie, who turned 33 earlier this week, on July 2nd.

Wait a minute, she’s only 33?!? It feels like the Aussie actress and producer has been around forever. But it was just ten years ago that she had her breakout role in Martin Scorsese’s demented black comedy The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). She was a revelation as Naomi Lepaglia, the blonde bombshell trophy wife of Leonardo DiCaprio’s corrupt stockbroker Jordan Belfort.

Margot’s performance is incredibly assured for such a young actor (she was 22 during filming), and while working in such a big-time production. She delivers several memorable moments, many of which are indelibly imprinted on cinema history. In fact, back in June of this year MovieWeb helpfully compiled and ranked her best moments in the film.

Her first, full moment onscreen is a doozy. The camera lasciviously glides over her underwear-clad body, while a voiceover from DiCaprio narrates, “My wife, Naomi, the Duchess of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. A former model and Miller Lite girl.” It’s immediately clear Jordan only prizes Naomi for what he sees as her finest asset: her body. She’s another plaything in his corrupt playpen, just like his Ferrari. Only thing is, Naomi is no trophy—she’s a spitfire—and as the film progresses Margot masterfully stands toe to toe with DiCaprio, proving that Naomi is more than capable of putting Jordan in his place.

The scene where she threatens to withhold sex is another standout Margot moment. Not only because she’s quite possibly the sexiest that anyone’s ever been onscreen before—“Mommy is just so sick and tired of wearing panties”—but also because she plays it with the perfect balance of seduction and comedy. This performance was an early indicator of her strengths, especially her effortless ability to move between styles, to do whatever the role calls for.

In my mind, Naomi is Margot’s Elvira Hancock role. Just like Michelle Pfeiffer in Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983), Margot firmly established herself as an actor to watch in The Wolf of Wall Street, forever after. Also like Michelle, she did so while working for a legendary movie brat director in a nearly three hour epic, while more than holding her own against an established, critically lauded actor (DiCaprio in her case; Al Pacino in Michelle’s).

When Michelle stepped off the elevator in her first scene in Scarface, she demanded our attention. Margot did the same when she stood up, locked eyes with the camera, and glided towards us in that opening scene. In her second scene, and first with dialogue, she even wears a similarly shaded blue-green dress as Michelle’s in Scarface, further cementing the connections between these two roles for me. Elvira and Naomi were both objects of desire for troubled, toxic men who only really wanted to possess them, just like they collected estates, cars, and other expensive toys with money they made illegally.

More prime roles would follow over the last decade, including a few that earned Oscar nominations for the Queensland native. From I, Tonya (2017) to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), from Bombshell (2019) to Babylon (2022), she’s been in the cinematic spotlight consistently. She’s also become a successful producer of films like Birds of Prey (2020), Promising Young Woman (2020), and the upcoming Barbie (2023).

Speaking of Barbie, later this month Margot will be in theaters all across the globe in the film that’s sure to be the talk of the summer movie season. Casting Margot to play the world’s most legendary female doll is about as perfect as it gets. And as she did previously with Harley Quinn, she’s about to bring an even bigger, more established pop culture institution to life. That’s a pretty hefty responsibility. If any actor of her generation could do it, Margot is the one.