Margot Robbie has revealed that she wrote Quentin Tarantino an actual old-fashioned pen-and-paper letter in hopes of being cast in one of his films, which is how she ended up playing Sharon Tate in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
The director interviewed her for the cover of Vogue Australia, where they spoke about the act of “happenstance” that let to her being cast. Tarantino revealed that he was finishing his script and was dead keen on Robbie for the role of Tate when her letter arrived.
She explained that she had long wanted to work with him, but didn’t feel she could approach him early in her career:
“I had wanted to write the letter for years and years and years. Because I’d heard you were going to do 10 movies and I couldn’t bear the thought I would miss the boat and never see what one of your film sets was like: I needed to figure out a way to get on to set. Maybe I could even hold a door in the back of a scene. But at the same time I wasn’t really in the right position to reach out to Quentin Tarantino and say: ‘Hello, my name is Margot and can I come visit your sets?’”
She said that, after the success of I, Tonya, she finally felt bold enough to get in touch, but was still nervous about how to do it:
“I remember agonising over everything – the paper, the pen, how I was going to write it – big, small, spaced out. Then, of course, I thought you might not be able to get the letter anyway, so I should stop freaking out so much, and then I just wrote the goddamn thing and prayed that somehow it would get to you, and it did. A couple of weeks later I remember getting the phone call saying: ‘Quentin got your letter and he’d really like to meet up.’”
Obviously it all worked out, because here we are. The interview touches on everything from the heavy Aussie accent that Robbie shed before coming to Hollywood to her newfound appreciation for the life of Sharon Tate. You can read it here.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is in cinemas now.
