Asteroid City is a Wes Anderson film so committed to its own layered structure that the actual story feels like it exists inside a story about the story. Margot Robbie appears briefly but memorably as an actress within the film's fictional TV special framing device. The pastel desert palette and deadpan grief sit right next to each other the whole time, which is either the point or the problem depending on who you ask. Some people found it cold and exhausting; others thought the distance was exactly right. | © Focus Features
Suite Française follows Margot Robbie as a young French woman falling for a German officer occupying her village during World War II. The film is based on Irène Némirovsky's unfinished novel, written while she was being hunted by the very regime the story depicts. That backstory adds a weight the romance alone could not carry. Robbie holds her own against Michelle Williams and Kristin Scott Thomas, but the film's real pull is how quietly it refuses to make the war feel distant. | © Universal Pictures
About Time is a romantic time travel film where Margot Robbie plays Mary, the cheerful flatmate who briefly derails everything before Rachel McAdams takes over the story. That side role is easy to overlook, but Robbie makes her genuinely funny and warm in the few scenes she has. The real pull of the film is Richard Curtis doing what he does best. It wraps a love story inside something quieter about fathers, sons, and what people choose to do with the time they have. | © Universal Pictures
Goodbye Christopher Robin follows the real story behind Winnie the Pooh, and it is sadder than most people expect. A.A. Milne writes the books partly to cope with war trauma, and his son Christopher Robin pays the price when the world turns him into a symbol. Margot Robbie plays Daphne, the cold and distant mother who makes an already difficult situation worse. The film is quieter than its premise suggests, and that restraint is what makes the ending land. | © Fox Searchlight Pictures
Bombshell drops Margot Robbie into the Fox News sexual harassment scandal as a fictional new hire watching the whole machine crack apart. Her character exists to show what the women who stayed silent were protecting, and that choice lands harder than any speech could. The film works best when it stops explaining and just lets the awkward, awful moments breathe. Roger Ailes built something rotten, and the movie is most effective when it shows exactly how normal that rot looked from the inside. | © Lionsgate
Mary Queen of Scots puts two of the best actresses of their generation in the same room and basically dares you to blink. Saoirse Ronan plays Mary with fire and entitlement, while Margot Robbie's Elizabeth I hides vulnerability behind layers of white paint and rigid composure. The tension between these two women drives everything, even when they are not sharing the screen. When they finally meet, the scene carries the weight of the entire film. | © Focus Features
The Big Short takes one of the driest financial disasters in modern history and makes it genuinely fun to watch. Margot Robbie shows up in a bubble bath to explain mortgage bonds, and that one scene says everything about how the movie handles complicated material. It keeps slapping you with the absurdity of what actually happened, and the anger underneath never lets you forget these were real people losing real homes. | © Paramount Pictures
Birds of Prey drops Harley Quinn into her own story and immediately makes her more fun without the Joker around. Margot Robbie runs the whole thing with the kind of chaotic energy that feels genuinely unhinged rather than performed. The action sequences are sharp and fast, and the movie never takes itself seriously enough to get boring. What sticks is how confidently weird it lets itself be. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Suicide Squad had one job: make the villains the most fun part of the DC universe. It mostly fumbles that, burying its best moments under a plot that loses confidence about halfway through. Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn is the exception. She walks in fully formed, weird, and electric in a way that the rest of the film never quite matches. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
The Suicide Squad gives Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn the chaotic, colorful playground the character always deserved. James Gunn throws a giant starfish monster, exploding heads, and genuine comic book weirdness at the screen without ever losing track of the characters underneath. It is gorier and stranger than most DC movies, and that is exactly the point. Robbie fits right into the madness without being swallowed by it. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Babylon throws Margot Robbie into 1920s Hollywood as Nellie LaRoy, a wild, reckless nobody who wants to be a star so badly it destroys her. The film is loud, chaotic, and genuinely excessive in ways that feel intentional rather than sloppy. Robbie carries the whole tragic arc on her back, and her performance in the final act hits harder than anything else in the movie. Damien Chazelle built a three-hour spectacle around the cost of ambition, and Robbie makes you feel every cent of it. | © Paramount Pictures
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood gives Margot Robbie very little dialogue, and that turns out to be the whole point. She plays Sharon Tate as a presence rather than a character. Pure warmth, pure life, someone the movie wants you to fall in love with before history can get anywhere near her. Tarantino uses that silence to build something that hits completely differently once you understand where the story is going. | © Sony Pictures
I, Tonya builds the whole story like a bar fight. Everyone remembers a different version of events, nobody fully admits fault, and the movie lets all those contradictions sit right next to each other without cleaning them up. Margot Robbie plays Tonya Harding not as a villain or a victim but as someone the system chewed up and then blamed for the mess. The skating sequences alone are worth the watch, but it's the fury underneath everything that makes it stick. | © Neon
The Wolf of Wall Street throws Margot Robbie into one of cinema's most chaotic playgrounds, and she holds her own against DiCaprio at full throttle. She plays Naomi, a character who could easily be set dressing, but Robbie makes her the sharpest person in every room she enters. The movie is three hours of excess, bad decisions, and people getting away with things they absolutely should not, and it never once feels long. | © Paramount Pictures
Barbie starts in a plastic paradise where everything is perfect, pink, and slightly unsettling. Margot Robbie plays the role straight while the world around her gets increasingly unhinged, and that choice is exactly what makes it work. The film somehow manages to be a sharp critique of the thing it is also celebrating, without ever losing its nerve or its humor. Not many movies can pull off a dance number and an existential crisis in the same scene. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
From a breakout turn opposite Leonardo DiCaprio to an Oscar-nominated run as a producer and star, Margot Robbie has built one of the sharpest filmographies in Hollywood. She slips between comedy, crime, and prestige drama without missing a beat. Here are 15 of her best movies you need to see.
