Margot Robbie is a charisma vacuum

Absolutely agree.

I agree 100%. Even though she’s been nominated for 2 Oscars, the only film in which she made an impression was Wolf of Wall Street (and only in one scene). She’s undeniably gorgeous and never stands out as the worst thing in any film, but she’s easily forgettable.

I like campy and silly, but I have no desire to see the Barbie movie, though that's not Robbie-dependent.

She’s very beautiful and seems down to earth and likable but she also has no real screen presence and isn’t much of an actress despite how acclaimed she is. She has been mediocre in almost everything outside of Wolf of Wall Street, the one role she truly shined in and the role that made her a star. Her Harley Quinn was terrible and I didn’t think she deserved either Oscar nomination.

She was perfectly cast in OUATIH though, as she was almost an enigma in that film. It worked.

Is it Ryan Goaling dependent?

Ryan Gosling also lacks charisma but is always pushed on us.

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Kelly Clarkson really needs to lose weight.

I think she has amazing screen presence and the camera loves her.

R7 please. Every time he has a movie out the media pushes him way too hard. He does mostly indies because almost everything he does flops. He did big studio movies consecutively for a while and bomb after bomb. After that space movie tanked and lost the studio hundreds of millions he slowed down.

They desperately tried making him one of the big leading men and most people didn’t buy the hype.

The only thing I've ever seen her in was when she hosted SNL and I was surprised by the amount of personality and presence she displayed. Of course a movie is different, but from the trailer I saw, she was fine as Barbie.

She isn’t Barbie. Not tall enough. Doesn’t have long legs.

“Who”, not “that”, OP.

She was sensational in Babylon, was just a force of nature on the screen.

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La La Land wasn’t an independent film. It was a film made by a studio. And not an indie one.

Indie film = Independently made film by filmmakers who then shop their film to studios.

Studio made films are not indie films.

The Gray Man = Major film (Netflix production and cost a lot to make)

First Man = Major Studio Film and lost the studio hundreds of millions

Blade Runner 2049 = Major Studio Film

La La Land = Big Studio Film

The Nice Guys = Major Studio Film (Warner Bros) and cost over $50 million to make before promotional costs. Anything over $20 million is no longer a low budget film.

The Big Short = Major Studio Film (and an ensemble film that cost a shit ton)

Gangster Squad= Major Studio Film

Looking at his filmography, you claim he only did two big studio movies in his career? Lmao.

OP, contrarian, can't let Margot have her day in the sun with a long overdue hit movie.

She's ... OK. Totally miscast as Harley Quinn. Pretty good in "Wolf of Wall Street." The rest ... meh.

"Charisma Vacuum: The Musical"!!

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OP has stated her boundaries!

Part of the issue is that these foreign actresses keep getting cast as American characters. Barbie is an American icon.... so let's cast someone with a heavy Australian accent. She's focusing on trying to hide her accent, and her charisma suffers.

R23 is right. I’ve noticed that most foreign actors are at their best when they play roles that allow them to speak naturally and not affected. She’s always playing Americans and her tone always sounds off.

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What American actress would DLers have play Barbie. Paris Hilton in a wig might look the part (stick thin, small nose, blonde), but she can't really act. Who should be American Barbie. Elle Fanning could work. Or not.

R23, r24 Margot Robbie’s “American” accent is awful. I was a dialogue director earlier in my career and her speaking voice sets my teeth on edge.

There will never be another Julia Roberts. Hollywood has tried to make every gal that next Julia. They sold Jennifer Lawrence as the next Julia but with the acting prowess of Meryl Streep. People didn't buy it because Jlaw is a charisma vacuum herself.

What's crazy is that the Aussies are often better at doing American accents than the Brits. But Margot's accent never rang true to me when she plays an American.

R26. It could have been my Oscar role!

She's a pretty girl but there are so many prettier, even gorgeous.

My GiGi for instance. Bella, well we did invest a lot of money into her homely face

She was the perfect choice to play Sharon Tate although she doesn’t look anything like her. Sharon was stunning. Bland, limited in range, and lacking any real acting ability but she was the go-to girl when the role called for a certain type. That’s Robbie in a nutshell.

R14 Robbie was the worst thing in Babylon. Damien Chazelle bit off way more than he could chew in that movie, and it would probably still have failed with another actress, but Robbie was truly atrocious. Her attempt at a New Jersey accent was cringe-worthy, but it was really her deficiencies as an actress that sealed the deal.

I might be a total outlier but I don't find her beautiful or pretty. Her nose-to-mouth ratio is off, her eyes look weird. Julia Roberts has also avery unique look but her charisma (read: narcissism) makes it work and she can look gorgeous.

I'm not sure why they think us gays would be interested in Barbie. There are no dicks. Literally.

A beautiful smile goes a long way towards making me like someone and she doesn't have that. She always smiles like she is simultaneously suppressing a fart.

She has a fantastic team behind her with a lot of money to burn, but she's never given me star quality. Very boring, bland personality.

[quote] Margot Robbie is a charisma vacuum ... she looks even more ordinary, made worse by an astonishing lack of personality.

Why should she be different from any other current 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟.

R38: Miss Chalamet is no star.

I don't know I think she's got a few years left as a leading lady. She's definitely better looking than Jlaw, Emma Stone, or Brie Larson. She seems generally well liked and conveys some charm when doing press.

I thought she was great in Wolf of Wallstreet

Big Emma Stone fan. Yes, some may say her looks are laughable. Unphotographable. But the woman has TALENT and real charm. I watched Aloha for the first time a while back. It was written and directed by Cameron Crowe so I was intrigued. I didn’t know what to make of the movie at first. The plot was so convoluted and confusing and the performances so broad that I wondered how so many talented actors could be so wrong. But I stayed with it and I’m glad I did. LOVED the chemistry between Stone and Cooper. They just played off each other so beautifully. The movie turned out to be one of the most enjoyable I have watched in a long time. Didn’t mean to hijack the thread but there really isn’t much to say about Robbie that hasn’t already been said.

She's pals with noted fuck up Cara Delvignewhatever so I wonder about her drug use/sexuality.

R43 Are you saying that she’s a lesbian because she’s friends with a lesbian? What a tiny little world you must inhabit.

Summary of Margot Robbie's plastic surgery. She's only in her early 30s. She now looks like Eileen Davidson of the Young and the Restless.

She was never going to be a Julia or JLaw. Not goofy/girl-next-door enough.

They pushed her instead as the next Charlize. But she's not quite as beautiful (though she's stunning for sure) nor is she quite as talented an actress (but she's fine, overall, in this regard) and Theron.

[quote] Summary of Margot Robbie's plastic surgery.

Ozempic cheeks ?

Buccal fat removal. So dumb to do that.

She does seem like a lesser Charlize.

Didn't she just fuck the right people at the right time?!? I thought that was the force behind her career.

She's fine, she was really pretty at one point but I haven't paid enough attention to tell if it's just aging or she messed with her face.

I think Robbie proved just how shallow and superficial she is in films like Bombshell and Babylon, two films where she didn't even have a well-constructed character to play but just thought she could act her way out of it. It's like, doesn't she know a good script when she reads one? Flaying around and widening your eyes for two hours (or whatever it was) doesn't constitute a performance. She should know better. That character in Babylon didn't make any sense at all.

Also R14, Babylon SUCKED.

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She seems robotic and a simpleton.

Charlize started out as arm piece to the male lead in a couple of late 90s films, and then pulled out that performance in Monster which was the quintessential 'uglying down to show I can act' Oscar bait, but it was terrific. Charlize has somehow remarkably straddled the line between larger than life Hollywood beauty in the tradition of Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth with legitimate acting ability.

I see with Robie an attempt at a similar trajectory but she is neither as 'larger than life' gorgeous as Theron or as gifted an actor. I was impressed with her Tonya Harding, as there is a hard, trashy quality to Robie's looks that lent itself well to that. I also was impresed by her Sharon Tate or at least what Tarantino did with her to evoke a sense of Tate and the 'what might have been...' aspect of her life. Elle Fanning is a bit too pale in her looks to play Barbie. I actually could see Jennifer Lawrence as Barbie (though her looks are even harder than Robie).

I thought she deserved the oscar for I Tonya. So there.

R52 agreed. That's why Charlize is Charlize. And why Robbie is not. Organic stardom generally plays out better than forced stardom.

Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Julia, Sandra, etc.: They all became A listers because a perfect-storm performance (or three) put them there.

r54 sorry but J law was never a great beauty. Putting her in the same category as Margot or Charlize is laughable.

I really thought Charlize would be a great dramatic actress after Monster, but she’s mainly done perfume ads and forgotten action films. I don’t even think of her as an A lister anymore.

R58 she always has my heart because of Young Adult. I absolutely love her in that.

Charlize comes off humorless in all her performances. And she was horrifically miscast in Cider House Rules looking like she was hooking up with a boy in it. But she earned the role for sucking Harvey's mutilated cock with his pasted balls on his thigh.

Charlize comes across as cold as ice.

Margot was on that terrible Australian soap before being cast in WOWS

Since Barbie is a hit, we will never get rid of Margot. She’s now a bigger star than Jennifer Lawrence.

r64 shes been bigger than J Law for a few years now. J Law's career dried up the minute she got that Oscar nomination for Joy. After that Harvey went down and her career has yet to recover.

No, not just you. I've never understood it either. She's bland and doesn't have much acting range to me.

Well, Hollywood is not the theatah so the acting range is not crucial. In Hollywood you get by with a knock out face and she has that in droves.

R63: People went to see it because of the doll not Margot.

They went to see it because the doll was well cast with Margot. I can assure you this would not be the hit it is had they kept Amy Schumer in the part

I think Greta Gerwig, a true talent, has saved Margo Robbie’s career. Robbie has an attractive face and periodic visits to the plastic surgeon will keep it presentable for at least another decade. She has very little range as an actress, and mainly mumbles or shrieks her dialogue. She was very good in I, Tonya, where she could draw on her lower class character. I doubt she’ll get that kind of role again.

Margot's best performance was her breakout performance in Wolf Of Wall Street. She was good in I, Tonya and used effectively in OUATIH, but thats about it. Everything else has been mediocre or all around bad. She was fine as Barbie but its bad when some of the supporting cast and your male lead stand out in every scene over you, especially in a movie that is so anti-male.

I don't care for her and her Repug husband but Carrie Underwood could look like a Barbie with the right hair and makeup

[quote] I can assure you this would not be the hit it is had they kept Amy Schumer in the part

Well, there’s always the Cabbage Patch Kids movie that she’s born to play!

Babylon was lowest point in her career. Rumors said she wanted to quit the show business after babylon. Barbie saves her career

So are they thinking Margot Robbie is now FINALLY gonna be the next Julia and Sandra? Think what you want about them but those two had a magic that spelled movie star. I just don't get it with Margot. And I actually like her as an actress. But not as a movie star.

Regardless of her talent or lack of it, her looks are so perfect she is a perfect Barbie. I know I've seen her in movies but could not pick her out of a lineup. If there is such a thing as 'bland beauty', she has it. Goop has it, too.

Barbie is now likely to be the #1 movie of 2023 or may come close if it can't beat Super Mario Bros. It will earn a quarter billion in the first few days worldwide. She is great in the movie and I doubt anyone who saw the movie would question her charisma. (Oddly I cant imagine anyone who saw Babylon questioning her charisma either.)

Money won’t be an issue after this weekend, but I was staring to wonder if Margot and her husband’s production company was in financial trouble. There was an air of desperation surrounding the final months of promotion for Barbie (which could’ve relied on the clever teaser trailer, on set photos, and movie poster campaign).

Loved her in 'I, Tonya'. She's an actor; she doesn't have to be charismatic in person. Save it for the screen.

Lots of women look like her. But she's got a production company, so she can make roles for herself and keep working. She strikes me as savvy and hard working. She's probably making hay while the sun shines.

R74 she was never poised to be the next Julia or Sandra. Why you keep bringing them up makes no sense. They were rom-com queens. She’s never once been compared to them.

I don’t know if the industry supports star vehicles anymore. Definitely not for women. Everything now is IP and franchise. Roberts, Bullock and Streep were all given great star vehicles.

Margot and Ryan Gosling may do an Oceans Eleven type movie. Zzz

The industry has changed. Streaming has changed the way things work. Movie stars aren’t really a thing anymore. Most Names don’t carry movies to success anymore the way they once did. It’s a completely different game now.

Meryl was never a romcom queen either. Her vehicles were usually dramas or dark comedies. Julia and Sandra were movies like My Best Friends Wedding and While You Were Sleeping.

Streep had a lot of commercial success. There isn’t one way to do it.

I am happy for Margot. She was in a lot of big bombs before Barbie.

Jennifer Lawrence must be so jealous since No Hard Feelings is already forgotten.

R82 ummmm who said she didn’t?

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Ka-Ching

She looks way older than 33.

Barbie bought her more time but she shouldn't make the mistake of assuming it was a hit because of solely because of her or that all her future projects will pull in decent numbers.

Because of the plastic surgeries.

No one has ever said she would be the next Julia or Sandra. They were romcom queens. Tell me what romcoms Margot has done

But audiences don’t care about romantic comedies anymore. And Julia or Sandra never had an opening weekend of $150 million.

R89 because that didn’t happen in the 90s or even 00s. Spider-Man was the only film to make that much in an opening weekend until The Dark Knight.

This is a movie about a legendary doll. They also didn’t star in franchise films.

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I don't get the Florence Pugh push at all.

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Florence and Margot will never be up for the same roles. Different looks, body types, personalities and attitudes. Very different women. One is very slender and beautiful and feminine while the other isn’t at all.

Like it or not, she now has her Legally Blonde or Pretty Woman or Speed or When Harry Met Sally.

She has her big, successful zeitgeist film that will mean she'll be a household name for the next two decades.

Didn't she also do the same clap/wink pose in Babylon?

R95 she was a household name before this.

"Money won’t be an issue after this weekend, but I was staring to wonder if Margot and her husband’s production company was in financial trouble. There was an air of desperation surrounding the final months of promotion for Barbie (which could’ve relied on the clever teaser trailer, on set photos, and movie poster campaign)."

A production company is usually not a business. It's a mechanism to get movies made or collect producing fees with some tax benefits for writeoffs of staff and office costs. They rarely have much of a balance on the books other than to get them through another year and for someone like Robbie, that isn't important because if she wants 3-4 staff members (1 or 2 execs and 2 assistants plus an office) she can write the check for $200k-300k for all of that based on her acting work

In a situation like Barbie, WB would not care what she had to say about anything. She MAY have some contractual ability to choose the specific images of her that goes on posters or allow/refuse behind the scenes footage from being released. That's it. WB the studio runs Barbie and its advertising.

No idea what you are referring to when you talk about desperation but its a misreading of one of the most successful movie campaigns ever. Because Barbie doesn't have a built in audience of ticket buyers--and it will now play like a 4 quadrant movie. Adult Men will go see it with their girlfriends and wives without kids. LOT of relieved people at WB who will hold on to their jobs. After THE FLASH, it would have been appropriate to fire the top execs in marketing but WB waited to see if Barbie campaign worked as well as it seemed to be doing -- and it did even better.

R77 Also, a production company would not have anything to do with deciding the cost of the movie or the budget of the marketing campaign. If WB had said, we want to do Barbie as a $30 mil movie, Robbie could have walked as talent (because they couldn't pay her what she wanted OR couldn't get costars she liked and respected due to funds) and kept her producing credit. Because producing credits and fees are contractual and based on selling the project to the studio on Day 1.

If you R77 get the rights to the classic game Hungry Hungry Hippos or SORRY! and the studio buys it, you are a producer. You may never be allowed to visit the set and if you do, it might be on your own dime. You will also get premiere tickets and possibly transportation and hotels covered to go to the premiere. That's it. No right to even read the screenplays that the studio is paying for. No right to attend meetings or offer your ideas on the script, casting, director search, etc. The studio MAY allow you to stay in the loop. The big producer they put on the project MAY allow you access to these stages of pre-production (like attending meetings) as a courtesy. But say 1 stupid thing or confuse your presence with actual power and you won't be invited back. And you will be paid your fee plus bonuses if that's in your contract and the movie does well.

This is why you will sometimes see actors or directors as executive producers on movies they're not in. They sell the project to a studio, decide not to do it (or in some cases, the studio wants to do it with someone else) and they keep their credit. Wtih actors, its usually that they didn't want to do the movie. With directors, its because the studio kicked them off the project, possibly after they cast the role and the big actor they hired wanted a bigger director.

I have not seen Barbie yet, and am reluctant to do so, however I am very happy for its success because I am very impressed with Greta Gerwig as a writer/director and am glad to see her now have some significant clout in Hollywood.

R95 no she has her Titanic. Kate didn't become a box office star after it because the film's success wasn't contingent on her performance. The movies you listed all became part of popular culture because the world fell in love with those actresses. This is not the case here. The Barbie brand is the star here not Margot elevating it into the public consciousness.

She's gorgeous and seems like a nice person.

R101 never said Margot is now destined to become a box office star. I said this movie guarantees her household name status for a couple decades. She already was famous, but never carried a film that was this big, this successful. It's a movie, I contend, will be watched over and over and over. Like the films I mentioned.

I also think you're Titanic comp is slightly off. I get what you're saying. However, I think Leo was given most of the credit (whether that's fair or not, it's true). It was billed as his movie. It was promoted as his movie. And he was instantly seen as the biggest star in the world the second it opened. Kate was always the number two for that film. And a distant one at that.

Barbie is all Margot's.

Kate Winslet was never box office. She has done very well though from her acting ability.

"...one of the most successful movie campaigns ever."

Agree, R98. They've created a lot of buzz through people wearing pink or a particular Barbie/Ken look to screenings. People are having fun, and it's easy to join in. Not my thing of course, but I see deceptively smart promotion here. It may nudge people who were on the fence about it to go see it.

Even though R98 / R99 called me out on my bullshit, theirs is the type of post I enjoy coming across on DL. Every now and then someone knows what the hell they’re talking about…and they don’t mind calling out people like me who are going off of thoughts and feelings!

Even though I adore Brad Pitt and was promised by DL that there was going to be a butt sighting, I fell asleep about 20 minutes into the movie. For the record, I am a lesbian, which means to me (personally) Robbie has zero sex appeal.

R103, I always got the impression Kate Winslet was happy to let Leo take most of the credit for Titanic. The reaction to it was bonkers. I don't see a British theatre and small-film actress envying being in the eye of that storm at all.

Margot Robbie is not a trained actress like some of the other Australian stars. That's why she struggles with accents: like the Brits, Australians who go to the good theatre schools are taught a lot of voice work, including but not limited to accents. Some are better at it than others, but most are better than those with no significant training at all. It took Kylie a forever of post-fame coaching to drop her Neighbours accent, which was a howler, and learn to speak a pleasant cross between Australian and British.

Speaking of Kate Winslet, she does the best Australian accent in the biz.

Robbie is missing that “it” something. The “It” Farrah, Linda Evangilista, Roberts and Bullock have, even Sharon Tate had it

Remembering Sharon Tate before she was murdered, MR did not embody Tate at all.. I think she is pretty but average. Forgettable in 10 yrs

Even this thread is dying from a lack of interest.