Tickled pink – Margot Robbie, the Aussie who’s taking Barbie to the big screen
In bringing the iconic toy to the big screen, Australian actress Margot Robbie is aiming high in trying to please both avid fans and feminist critics
At some point in the five years since Margot Robbie first began working on a project to bring Barbie, the 64-year-old plastic doll, to the big screen, she would have had to reveal a very salient fact to her corporate collaborators.
Robbie, who grew up in the agricultural hinterland of Australia’s Gold Coast, had never owned a Barbie doll as a child. She had never even played with one.
If the disclosure gave those collaborators pause for thought, it didn’t last. On July 21, Barbie – starring Robbie as the eponymous heroine and Ryan Gosling as one of many Kens – will go head to head with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer in the box office battle of the year.
