Margot Robbie became a Hollywood sensation after her role in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Playing the character of Naomi Lapaglia, the mistress turned 2nd wife to Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort, Robbie made a mark for herself. Soon after, the actress started getting more and more lucrative roles, until her latest, Barbie, became a worldwide phenomenon.
One of these roles in between was that of the late actress Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar nominated movie, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. The actress who tragically lost her life at the young age of 26 is portrayed by Robbie in a new light in the 2019 movie, but there is still a feeling of lacking there, something that goes beyond the movie and the actress herself. Let’s take a deeper look!
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Margot Robbie’s Lack of Dialogue in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
In a movie that mainly focuses on the characters of Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a washed up actor from the 60, and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood did not have much to do with the character of Sharon Tate. She is more of an idea than a character in the movie, something that becomes obvious with every passing scene. Margot Robbie, to be fair, plays her role well, lack of dialogues included, but again, there is not much for her to do.
So when Quentin Tarantino was questioned by a female journalist during the film’s Cannes Film Festivel premiere on the lack of dialogues for Margot Robbie’s character, the director, unceremoniously, rejected this “hypothesis.” And though he did later defend his choice, it was obvious that for him, Tate is less a human and more a presence in the film. Tarantino said,
“[Tate] is an angelic presence throughout the movie, she’s an angelic ghost on earth, to some degree, she’s not in the movie, she’s in our hearts.”
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In this situation, Robbie was left to defend her role and the lack of talking done by her character.
Margot Robbie on Portraying Sharon Tate in the Quentin Tarantino Directorial
To play a character like Sharon Tate was probably not that easy, even for an actress of Margot Robbie’s caliber. In life, Tate was more of a symbol than a person, a blonde beauty, a s*x symbol. And even in death, again, she became another symbol – this time of a beautiful victim. So, to portray a character like that, and given the kack of dialogues, it was definitely not easy.
Defending her role, Robbie said,
“I think the moments that I got on screen gave me an opportunity to honor Sharon. I think the tragedy was, like Brad [Pitt] mentioned, ultimately, the loss of innocence. I think that can be done without speaking.”
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She further added,
“I think I did have enough time to explore the character, even without dialogue specifically, which is an interesting thing as I often do look to the interaction with other characters to inform me on the character. Rarely do I get to spend so much time on my own as a character, in a day to day existence. That was an interesting thing for me to do as an actor, I really appreciated the exercise. I felt that I could deliver what I wanted to onscreen.”
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is available for streaming on Hulu.
