Margot Robbie stays close to her Aussie gambling roots on and off the screen

A certain movie role of a decidedly pink hue has pushed Australian actress Margot Robbie to the very pinnacle of celerity stardom in 2023. Yet behind all the fame and the red carpet photo-ops, the 33-year-old is not so different from many other Australian stars who came before her. With a fondness for casino gaming, both in the movie roles she chooses and in her personal life, she is living proof that you can take the girl out of Australia (she moved to New York 10 years ago), but you can’t take Australia out of the girl.

Let’s find out more about the real Aussie girl behind the fantastic plastic Barbie façade. 

The usual Australian rite of passage

What do Kylie Minogue, Natalie Imbruglia, the Hemsworth brothers, and Jason Donovan have in common? That’s right, they all got their first big break on the legendary Aussie soap Neighbours. Margot followed exactly the same rite of passage, getting signed up for the role of Donna Freedman in 2008.

Donna was originally intended as a guest character, but she became part of the main cast and was a Neighbours regular until 2011 when both the character and the actress left Australia to pursue a new life in New York.

An Aussie who likes to gamble? Whatever next?

Margot’s big screen debut was in About Time, an underrated rom-com from Richard Curtis about a time traveler who falls for her, and for her convincing English accent. The movie did little at the box office but is something of a forgotten classic. Her breakthrough role was in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street.

Since then, she has appeared in a handful of blockbusters and several smaller-scale indie flicks, but there is one theme that has appeared time and again. In 2015, she starred alongside Will Smith in Focus, playing a grifter who gets involved in various high-stakes gambling capers.

In 2018, it was announced that Margot would play real-life gambling kingpin Marisa Lankester in a movie based on her book, Dangerous Odds. That project has stalled since Ms. Lankester withdrew her support, and Margot’s focus was diverted to the Barbie movie.

With that now wrapped and released, Margot has been able to look to future projects, and the latest rumor is yet another casino classic. She has been tipped to star in the first new Ocean’s Eleven movie since Oceans 8 five years ago. Details of the project are sketchy, but it seems she and Barbie co-star Ryan Gosling will share the screen in what is likely to be a prequel of the movies to date. 

Margot’s affinity with games of chance is not restricted to the characters she plays on screen. Australians have a reputation for gambling. As a nation, they spend far more per capita than any other, and the availability of even more casinos in cyberspace with a bigger choice of games has made gambling more popular still. You can check out https://www.gambleonlineaustralia.com/casino/games/ if you are curious about online games of chance, but for a chance to bump into Margot at the blackjack table or roulette wheel, you’ll need to try out the real thing. Margot tends to keep a low profile, but when she does go out to party, she tends to favor casinos and has been seen at The Venetian with other A-listers for major events like New Year celebrations.

Keeping private life private

Unlike so many celebrities, Margot does not invite the cameras into her home or share every family moment on Instagram. We know that she married director Tom Ackerley in 2016 in Australia, that they spent a brief period in London, that they bought a beautiful home in LA’s Hancock Park in 2017, and that they put it on the market again in 2021 so that they could relocate to an even more secluded gated compound on Venice Beach.

The 33-year-old has no children as yet and tends to bristle when asked about the possibility of parenthood. However, a close source recently suggested that a family could be on the near horizon.