Margot Robbie ‘Stopped Learning [Her] Lines’ for ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’

Margot Robbie had racked up quite a few film and TV credits prior to being cast in The Wolf of Wall Street. However, portraying Naomi Lapaglia took her career to new heights. Starring opposite Hollywood A-lister, Leonardo DiCaprio, in the Martin Scorsese film made her a household name. It also helped the Australian actor launch an incredibly successful career in The U.S. But how did Robbie approach starring in such a high-profile film?

Margot Robbie didn’t initially like her character in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’

Robbie went through multiple rounds of auditions before she was able to secure a spot in The Wolf of Wall Street cast. However, once she secured the role of Naomi, she had another challenge ahead of her. The actor-producer admits that she actually didn’t like her character when she originally read the script. It wasn’t until she worked with an acting coach to build out her character that she found a love for Naomi.

The actor improvised a lot of her lines while filming the movie

Once Robbie knew who her character was, she began the memorization process. But even that was short-lived. Scorsese is known for being a particularly innovative director. He gives his actors a ton of leeway, often allowing them to do improvisation on the spot. This is something that the Suicide Squad actor took advantage of. She quickly decided she wasn’t going to be beholden to a script.

“I stopped learning my lines,” Robbie revealed to The New York Times. Instead of delivering lines from a page, Robbie would often make up dialogue on the fly and then listen for Scorsese’s honest response. “If he likes it, you hear this laughter somewhere behind the monitors,” the actor shared at the New York premiere of The Wolf of Wall Street. “And you’re like, O.K., he likes it, and you keep going on whatever tangent you’re going on.”

Robbie was constantly taking risks for ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’

Of course, relying on improvisation is a vulnerable experience. Robbie admits that sometimes she was unsure if her improvisation was really landing or if she was just taking big swings and falling short. “Other than that, I was totally in the dark, and you never know if what you’re doing is completely stupid and everyone thinks you’re an idiot.”  

It seems Robbie wasn’t afraid to go for broke and take risks while filming The Wolf of Wall Street. Of course, the same thing can be said about how she approached her audition for the film. While improvising with DiCaprio in a chemistry read, Robbie made the decision to slap her fellow actor in the face. She immediately realized her faux pas and worried that she would lose out on the role and possibly face legal trouble. Fortunately, for her, DiCaprio was all for the display of violence and even encouraged her to hit him again. The rest, as they say, is history.