This weekend sees Margot Robbie return to the big screen in the period romantic drama Wuthering Heights, a film she stars in and also produced. At the age of 35, Robbie has accomplished more than most in position, with three Academy Award nominations (two as an actress and one as a producer), four Golden Globe Award nominations, and six British Academy Film Awards.

She was only 22 years old when she began filming her breakthrough role in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, and she proved early on that she had more than enough presence to command the screen. With a collection of both prestige and tentpole projects, Robbie has emerged as one of the best actresses of her generation and shows no signs of slowing down. So, as her latest project is set to dominate the holiday box office, this feels like the perfect time to break down her five best performances ever.

Honorable Mention: Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

When Margot Robbie was cast as Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, many thought the director was making a film about the late actress who was murdered by members of the Manson Family in 1969. As it turned out, Tarantino was making a period comedy/drama that toyed with history a bit and was more of a look at the rapidly changing film industry during that era.

Robbie’s Tate, with minimal screentime, was used to showcase the optimism of the era, which was in stark contrast to the film’s darker themes. The power in Robbie’s performance is the infectious exuberance she exudes as the actress, and this is done with very little time to do it, yet she fully takes advantage of the moments she gets to have on screen. In one of the film’s best scenes, she lights up the screen as she heads to the Regency Bruin Theatre to watch herself in a movie. Her happiness is palpable, and it doesn’t come with a hint of cockiness.

There is an innocence in how Robbie approaches the moment, and that’s how she handles most of her time in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It’s proof of what you can do with very little dialogue as she showcases the power of expression. In this case, it’s the pure joy of a woman who loved her craft and was simply living life to the fullest.

5. Barbie in Barbie (2023)

It’s Robbie’s highest-grossing film to date, with a gross of $1.4 billion, and it gave her the bragging rights as a producer that she helped a movie like Barbie get to where it needed to be in order to achieve the level of success it achieved. It’s a film that not only proved her worth as a businesswoman but, in front of the camera, also showed her ability to give dimension to a character that could’ve been easily one-dimensional.

Directed by Greta Gerwig from a screenplay she co-wrote with Noah Baumbach, Barbie follows the titular character (Robbie) as she travels with Ken (Ryan Gosling) from Barbieland to the real world, where they set off on a journey of self-discovery following what can only be described as an existential crisis. Barbie could’ve easily drowned in superficiality under the wrong hands, but with Gerwig at the helm and Robbie in the lead, the film became a whip-smart commentary on class and gender issues that had something to say with substance while also being incredibly funny.

This might feel like an easy role to pull off, but it takes clever nuance to make it work because Robbie had to find the right balance between Barbie’s more superficial beginnings and her complex journey through the real world, where she realizes life isn’t as perfect as it is in Barbieland. She ultimately makes Barbie vulnerable while never losing the fact that the film is funny by engaging in moments of solid comedic timing and great physical comedy. She was able to find the heart in the satire, and I think the difficulty of this is lost on some, but it took someone of Robbie’s chops to make it work in a way that made sense for the audience.

4. Kayla Pospisil in Bombshell (2019)

In Bombshell, Robbie’s Kayla Pospisil is a composite character of women dealing with sexual harassment working at Fox News, while Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman portrayed real-life personas, but that doesn’t make her turn here any less compelling or heartbreaking. Directed by Jay Roach from a screenplay by Charles Randolph, Bombshell details the accounts of the women working at Fox News who made it their mission to expose CEO Roger Ailes for sexual harassment. Robbie’s character is fictional but based on various real-life women who endured harassment at the hands of Ailes, and through her performance, she manages to make their turmoil, through this one character, palpable and very real.

Her character enters the film with a bit of optimism, and that is crushed as she experiences the shock and humiliation of being sexualized at the workplace. In many ways, she’s the film’s heart, and it hurts the audience as her ambitious nature is soon tarnished by the harsh truths that sometimes men in power abuse it. Robbie has some of the most difficult scenes in the film, none more powerful than when Kayla is called into Ailes’ office for what she believes to be a formal meeting, only to be humiliated as he asks her to twirl around and lift her dress.

This is followed by a more dramatic and compelling scene where she breaks down, telling a colleague about the encounter that showcases just how much her dream of success is falling apart in real time in an industry that can be devilishly cutthroat and downright vile. In the first scene, her discomfort and humiliation on her face speak volumes, while her range of emotions throughout proved to make standout moments for Robbie in a performance that earned her a much-deserved Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

3. Harley Quinn in The Suicide Squad (2021)

In all honesty, the culmination of Robbie’s work as Dr. Harleen Quinzel, aka Harley Quinn beginning in 2016’s Suicide Squad continuing in 2020’s Birds of Prey, goes a long way to prove that some actresses are just born to play certain roles but she’s at her most fun in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad as all the elements of the character seemed to come together fully. Working from his own screenplay, Gunn’s The Suicide Squad sees several convicts joining the “Suicide Squad” task force in exchange for lighter sentences.

Their mission is to head to the South American island of Corto Maltese and destroy an alien starfish known as Starro the Conqueror before it can be controlled by the local government. Despite The Suicide Squad being a sprawling ensemble, Robbie’s take on Harley Quinn stands out here because Gunn gave her an actual character to play rather than using her more as a prop when compared to her work in the 2016 film. That’s not to say she isn’t good in the 2016 installment, because she is, but she’s given more agency in Gunn’s film. There were more allowances for Robbie to be funny in the role and embrace the high-energy, chaotic nature of the character unapologetically.

Even though her obsession with Mr. J is a signature of the character, it was refreshing to see her free of that to be her own agent of chaos that operates on her own terms. Robbie also proved that she isn’t afraid to get down and dirty with the stunts in an intricate scene, reportedly constructed just for her by Gunn, that turns into a truly exhilarating escape sequence that the actress trained extensively for. Robbie has had no bad or even mediocre turns as Harley Quinn, but The Suicide Squad is the one outing that let her cut loose the most.

2. Naomi Lapaglia in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Robbie broke through hugely as Naomi Lapaglia in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street and proved that she could be fearless and powerful alongside a more established performer like Leonardo DiCaprio. Written by Terence Winter, The Wolf of Wall Street is based on Jordan Belfort’s 2007 memoir of the same name and details Belfort’s (DiCaprio) career as a stockbroker in New York City and how he ultimately engaged in corruption and fraud while working on Wall Street.

Robbie co-stars as Belfort’s second wife, Naomi Lapaglia, and when she enters the film, she turns one who could’ve been a one-dimensional caricature into a fiery force of nature. As movie legend has it, Robbie’s fearlessness began during her audition with DiCaprio, where she slapped the actor across the face in a moment that made Scorsese realize she was the right woman for the part. She carried on with some of these audacious moments during filming, which proved to be some of the film’s best scenes, including lines that are still recited today in pop culture (“Who’s Venice huh?, “Who? Who? What are you, a f*cking owl?”).

However, it’s the nursery room scene, where she withholds sex from Belfort because she suspects that he has cheated on her, yet again, that is a full demonstration of her power and ability to command the screen. The big mystery about her role here is that it didn’t earn her an Oscar nomination because it’s a performance that allowed her to transcend just being a pretty face that would get lost in the shuffle as his arm candy. It’s an opportunity that Robbie ran with and never looked back, as it made her an actress to watch in Hollywood.

1. Tonya Harding in I, Tonya (2017)

It was honestly a tough call between this film and The Wolf of Wall Street as Robbie’s best work, but I, Tonya ultimately won out because the actress got to take the lead here and managed to make a rather controversial figure into someone worthy of our sympathy. Directed by Craig Gillespie from a screenplay by Steven Rogers, I, Tonya chronicles the life of American figure skater Tonya Harding (Robbie) and details her fall from grace due to her connection to the 1994 assault of her rival, Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver). I, Tonya is unique in the sense that it isn’t a straight biopic as it begins by telling the audience the film is based on “contradictory” and “totally true” interviews with Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan).

There is a bit of a dark comedy element to the proceedings, as it sets up that both parties are unreliable narrators, and this technique is used for other interviews with characters, where breaking the fourth wall becomes common. Throughout the what’s true and what isn’t true narrative, what becomes abundantly apparent is Robbie’s ability to disappear into a role as she completely embodies the embattled Olympic figure, with Robbie training extensively for five months to add authenticity to her competitive skating scenes. Beyond the physical transformation, Robbie humanized Harding in a way that she hadn’t been before. She conveys her vulnerability and jittery nature, which establishes her as someone profoundly insecure who could easily be influenced by her slime of an ex-husband.

Harding isn’t a mere villain in the film, and much of that is courtesy of Robbie’s honest portrayal. By far her best moment in the film sees her looking at herself crying in the mirror, where you can see years of the turmoil Harding endured without saying a word. Reportedly, this scene was improvised by Robbie, once again proving her best attribute as an actress is her instincts, and this time they carried her to an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Wuthering Heights hits screens nationwide this Friday.

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