Margot Robbie Once Shared She Wasn’t a Big Enough Star to Be Cast in This Film

Margot Robbie has become one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood since her Wolf of Wall Street days. But there was one film she was seen as not big enough of a name to feature in.

Margot Robbie didn’t think anyone would notice her in ‘Wolf of Wall Street’

Even Robbie underestimated how big of a star she’d become after starring in Martin Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street. At first, Robbie doubted she’d even end up in the movie.

“Well, like everything in this industry, it’s rush-rush-rush and then wait. I did the audition tape here in L.A. and obviously never expected Marty [Scorsese] to see it,” she once told Reuters. “Then we got a call saying that he wanted to see me read with Leo in New York. I was contracted with Pan Am, a show I was doing, and there was the fact that I didn’t want to do nudity, so people were wondering why I even auditioned. But, then I got cleared at the eleventh hour.”

After her part in Wolf of Wall Street, however, Robbie experienced superstardom fast. Which was a complete 180 from the outcome she’d predicted.

“I know this sounds silly now, knowing how big the movie became, but at the time I was like, ‘No one’s gonna notice me in this film,’” she once told BAFTA (via Mirror). “It doesn’t matter what I do in this film because they’re gonna focus on Leo and I’ll just slip under the radar.”

Margot Robbie once shared that she wasn’t a big enough star to be cast in this film

In addition to Wolf of Wall Street, Robbie had appeared in a couple of other lesser known films in her earlier years. She had a minor role in the Rachel McAdams sci-fi feature About Time. Aside from that, she also expanded her filmography by doing another sci-fi drama titled Z For Zachariah. The movie saw Robbie in an apocalyptic world, with Chris Pine and Chiwetel Ejiofor rounding out the cast.

Although the movie came out after Wolf of Wall Street, Robbie’s attention was on Z For Zachariah first.

“I was actually trying to get the role of Ann in Z for Zachariah before I had done Wolf. But because I hadn’t done a large film, I didn’t have enough international value to my name to get the film funded,” Robbie once said according to Contact Music.

It wasn’t until her popularity shot up with Wolf of Wall Street that Robbie had a solid chance of leading the movie.

“So another actress was attached who had been in more bigger budget, commercial films,” she said. ”Ironically, you have to do the bigger films in order to make a small film. When I first tried to do Z for Zachariah, I couldn’t attach enough value to my name.”

Somewhere along the way, this would change. Thanks to her Wolf of Wall Street fame, Robbie would end up in the starring role after all.

Margot Robbie wanted to do ‘Z For Zacharia’ to prove herself after ‘Wolf of Wall Street’

Z For Zachariah wasn’t like most projects Robbie was accustomed to. Which was perhaps one of the film’s most attractive features for The Suicide Squad star.

“I was just really keen to do something a little more character-driven and something different to what I had been doing already, and it kind of ticked all the boxes in that regard,” Robbie told Vogue in 2015.

Robbie also believed Zachariah would further help demonstrate her range to audiences. She wanted to show viewers that she wasn’t limited to just one persona.

“I wanted to prove myself in a different way than people were about to see in Wolf of Wall Street,” she said.

One of the many ways her Zachariah role differed from her Wolf character was through their accents. Robbie had to adopt a more southern accent for Zachariah, which was made even more difficult given how soon she had to nail the sound.

“I found out I got the role five days before we started shooting, and it’s a very specific accent. It’s not an accent that you hear often,” she said.

She was eventually able to capture the accent with the help of Youtube videos.