Most people will remember Aussie actress Margot Robbie’s incredible and confident performance in Wolf of Wall Street.
Margot recalled her sex scene with Leonardo DiCaprio after the famous seductive scene in the child’s nursery.
The intimate bedroom scene saw the 28-year-old strip down, and she revealed there were 30 other men in the room who were members of crew at the time.
In an interview with Porter, Robbie said:
It doesn’t come across when you’re watching the movie, but in reality we’re in a tiny bedroom with 30 crew crammed in.
All men. And for 17 hours I’m pretending to be touching myself. It’s just a very weird thing and you have to bury the embarrassment and absurdity, really deep, and fully commit.
Speaking about the other perils of her sex scene in Wolf of Wall Street, Margot said to the Daily Beast:
I got a million paper cuts on my back from all that money! It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. If anyone is ever planning on having sex on top of a pile of cash: don’t.
Or maybe real money is a bit softer, but the fake money is like paper, and when I got up off the bed, I turned around to get my robe and everyone gasped.
I said, “What is it?” And they said, “You look like you’ve been whipped a million times. Your back is covered in a thousand red scratches.”
In the film, Robbie expertly portrayed the three dimensions of a passionate, quick-witted, street-wise woman, with the ability to poke fun at her beauty while owning unapologetically.
The fact Robbie is mostly talked about in terms of that scene is only a reflection on the mainstream media’s insistence on bolstering and highlighting a woman’s sexuality above a great performance.
Since appearing in Wolf of Wall Street, Margot has played a number of powerful female leads.
Next up came that cameo in The Big Short. She self-deprecatingly played herself, in a bathtub, explaining mortgage bonds. It was captivating, comedic, acutely self-aware and held the attention of everyone who doesn’t give a hoot about mortgage bonds.
It would’ve been easy for Robbie to continue to get work from this point onwards – a steady stream of typecast characters, one could’ve assumed – thanks to the blockbusters on her CV.
But did she do next? She opted to play a complicated and unlikeable Tanya Vanderpoel in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, written by Tina Fey.
The care-free character appeared superficial in her role as Fey’s foil, until the last when her ultimately morally-flawed decisions were driven by her hunger for success.
It’s rare a hard-working woman gets written this way into a fictitious place of work. It was very real.
Margot is much more than that scene and her entire performance in the film was powerful and complex.
I can’t imagine how awkward that must have been in front of an all male crew.
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