One of the biggest stories out of this year’s Academy Awards is that Margot Robbie was denied an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for Barbie, the critically acclaimed blockbuster that was the biggest film of 2023. Even Barbie director Greta Gerwig was snubbed, while Robbie’s co-stars Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera received nominations for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, respectively.
Regardless of the Oscar snub, Robbie had a massive impact on Hollywood in 2023, and she will likely continue to do so in the future. Here are three reasons why Robbie deserves some love from the academy and fans alike.
Margot Robbie has become a true box office draw
Barbie‘s $1.45 billion worldwide box office may not be a repeatable feat for any movie, and it almost equaled the $1.496 billion that Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick had in 2022. Those are phenomenal numbers for both Robbie and Cruise, but they mean even more for Robbie, who is just entering the prime of her career at only 33 years old. It took 15 years from her on-screen debut in the 2008 film Vigilante for Robbie to rise to the top.
It would be unrealistic to expect Robbie’s next movie to match the success of Barbie, but you can bet that it will get a large spotlight just because she’s in the leading role. Many of Hollywood’s top directors, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Damien Chazelle, David O. Russell, Wes Anderson, and James Gunn have already worked with Robbie, and she will continue to be in demand for the foreseeable future.
Margot Robbie is already producing films and TV shows
What do Promising Young Woman (pictured above), Saltburn, and the Netflix miniseries Maid have in common? Robbie produced all three projects without taking an on-screen role in any of them. Robbie started producing movies in 2017 with I, Tonya, the film that earned her the first (and currently only) nomination for Best Actress at the Oscars. Since then, Robbie has produced Terminal, Dreamland, Birds of Prey, and, of course, Barbie.
Having already established herself as a producer, Robbie has a lot more say in the projects that she wants to shepherd to the screen, even if she only takes a behind-the-scenes role. That’s the kind of power that very few performers have in Hollywood, and Robbie earned that even before Barbie became the film event of 2023.
Margot Robbie may still win an Oscar this year
As everyone knows by now, Robbie and Gerwig may have been snubbed in their respective Best Actress and Best Director categories, but there’s still a possibility that this year’s Oscar ceremony could end with both women on the podium to accept Best Picture for Barbie. Realistically, the front-runner is probably Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a film whose mutual success will always be linked to Barbie through the Barbenheimer phenomenon.
That said, the heavily publicized snub of both Robbie and Gerwig could also galvanize support for Barbie to pull off an Oscar night upset and take home the biggest prize of them all. Stranger things have happened at the Academy Awards. Even if Robbie walks away empty-handed this year, chances are very good that she will be back at the Oscars for additional chances to win Best Actress. You can count on that.
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