Not even Infernos’ largest followers might describe the nightclub as modern. Instead, its enchantment lies in tacky, churned-out pop anthems and the Gen Z-friendly drinks offers on supply. It is a venue the place the flooring are sticky and scantily clad queues to enter snake down the pavement exterior.
Twice Oscar-nominated Hollywood stars value an estimated $57 million, who rely Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling amongst their co-stars and have their very own critically acclaimed manufacturing firms, are normally conspicuous by their absence.
Yet the Clapham nightspot seems to be the one one Margot Robbie, 33 — star and producer of the soon-to-be-released film Barbie and at the moment essentially the most profitable actress on the planet — has ever endorsed, for causes which might be each totally on-brand to the hang-out and in keeping with her personal resolutely unstarry way of life.
“Everyone is wasted and so sweaty. Everyone looks a mess,” she defined. “By the time I make it to Infernos, I look so revolting no one’s going to look twice.”
Unlikely as it might sound for a girl whose house is now a $4 million Los Angeles mansion and who’s feted by the world’s best trend designers, Robbie was till 2016 a resident of Clapham, South London, residing with six buddies in a ramshackle, four-bedroom flat sarcastically dubbed The Manor.
Although already a family identify, because of her starring position alongside Leonardo Di Caprio within the 2013 Hollywood blockbuster The Wolf Of Wall Street, Robbie favoured a “student life”, swilling pints and having fun with picnics on Clapham Common.
“Those were the best days of my life,” she has mentioned. “For me, where you live and what you do have to be simplistic and comfortable, otherwise how are you possibly going to relax?
“Clapham has always felt unassuming in the sense you’re just left alone to get on with who you are, and that’s perfect for me.”
Even after upping sticks to Los Angeles in 2017, the place she now lives along with her British producer husband Tom Ackerley, 33, she has maintained a determinedly low-brow, Anglophile existence.
A Harry Potter fanatic, she revealed in January she nonetheless retains two Oyster playing cards in her pockets to journey the London Underground — “I always get the Tube” — and he or she adores the ITV actuality present Love Island.
Indeed, she appeared as happy to see the present’s decidedly much less well-known former contestants Ekin-Su Culculoglu, Davide Sanclimenti, Liberty Poole and Danica Taylor, at Barbie’s London premiere this week as they have been to see her, and proudly declared: “I seem to love a lot of British things. I love Harry Potter, I love my husband and I love Love Island.”
But how on earth did Robbie come to be residing in a Clapham home share within the first place? And what does her determination to decamp to this South London neighbourhood say about one among Hollywood’s most bankable stars?
The third of 4 siblings whose mother and father divorced when she was 5, Robbie was raised by her mom, Sarie, a physiotherapist, on Australia’s Gold Coast.
As a toddler, she was fiercely unbiased, insisting on making her personal lunch.
“If I wanted something a certain way, I just did it myself,” she says. Describing herself as a “business-savvy” lady, when she wasn’t boar-hunting or browsing, Margot would steal her brother’s toys and promote them in conjunction with the highway.
“I grew up learning more about agriculture and animal husbandry than you could imagine,” mentioned Robbie, who was obsessive about movies from a younger age however mentioned hers “was not the kind of upbringing you could ever have expected would lead anyone into acting”.
Having acquired a staunch work ethic from her “amazing” Scottish-born mom, whose mortgage Margot paid off as quickly as she discovered fame, she had labored as a cleaner, a Subway sandwich-maker and a gross sales assistant in a surf retailer by the point she was 16.
Not lengthy after, “ambition” propelled her to Melbourne to sleep on sofas as she cast an performing profession.
She was on a snowboarding vacation in Canada “in a van with no doors” when, in 2008, she landed the position of Donna Freedman on Neighbours, the Australian cleaning soap she’s described as “a rite of passage” having already launched the careers of Kylie Minogue, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce.
“I owe so much to Neighbours,” Robbie has mentioned. “It wasn’t just about giving me a break either. It gave me a real chance to work on my craft. It was the perfect training for Hollywood, and I will always be eternally grateful.”
So a lot in order that she filmed a cameo position from Los Angeles for the cleaning soap’s finale when it was axed from Channel 5 after 37 years final summer season, and despatched 37 bottles of champagne to the Melbourne set to mark “the end of an era”.
After three years on the cleaning soap, Margot moved to America in 2011, the place she performed a flight attendant on a short-lived TV collection known as Pan Am, earlier than touchdown her breakthrough position in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street, a biography of disgraced banker Jordan Belfort, performed by Di Caprio.
Margot was supplied the a part of Belfort’s spouse, Naomi, after an unscripted slap to Di Caprio’s cheek throughout her audition.
It was taking part in a supporting position within the World War II film Suite Francaise that she met her future husband, Ackerley, who was its assistant director, in 2014.
Margot, Ackerley and 5 others within the London-based movie crew bonded so nicely that they determined to maneuver in collectively.
“We were like: ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if we all lived together?’” Margot later mentioned. “Someone said: ‘But you don’t live in London,’ and I said: ‘I don’t live anywhere. I’ll move.’”
So she did, signing the lease on a property chosen to be reasonably priced to even the bottom paid crew member three days later, earlier than dashing to the Golden Globes in Los Angeles, the place The Wolf Of Wall Street had been nominated.
On the cusp of worldwide stardom, laying down roots with buddies faraway from the excesses of Hollywood appeared like a wise transfer. Their camaraderie was such that Margot reportedly instigated a obligatory “house tattoo”, with each member getting the identical design.
A pal who used to attend events on the Clapham property mentioned the house-mates appreciated to play consuming video games and bought via quite a lot of beer — which he remembers being plentiful in an in any other case empty fridge.
They’d go to Infernos after which nurse their hangovers the subsequent day on Clapham Common.
Pictures posted of the group on social media in 2014 recommend a hard-drinking way of life a world away from the fakery of LA.
One, captioned “the house degenerates”, exhibits a brunette Margot carrying black boots, posing along with her housemates atop a roof, sticking two fingers up on the digicam, carrying a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Oscars Bait’ (in 2018 Margot could be nominated for an Academy Award for her position in I, Tonya about notorious ice skater Tonya Harding).
Another exhibits a pile of bin baggage exterior the home full of empty beer cans.
“I was like a naughty schoolgirl,” Robbie mentioned of this time. “It was my first time living in London and I wanted to try every pub.”
She’s additionally pictured at Clapham’s SW4 digital dance pageant, barely recognisable in a throng of revellers in fancy head put on, and sitting astride a pal’s shoulders on what’s described as a ‘family night out’ to the London Eye.
There’s a elaborate costume photograph for Halloween, her distaste for ostentatiousness apparent.
“It seems crazy to spend a huge amount of money on things you don’t need,” she mentioned then.
“If I were a waitress, I’d probably have the exact same lifestyle. I’d go to the same clubs I go to already, live with the same housemates, hang out with the same people. I’m pretty frugal.”
When she did combine with celebrities, she generally bought confused, recalling an event when she spent half-hour speaking to Prince Harry at mannequin Suki Waterhouse’s get together: “I didn’t even know who he was . . . I thought I was hanging out with Ed Sheeran.”
Her bohemian popularity preceded her within the movie trade, as Alexander Skarsgard, her co-star in journey movie The Legend Of Tarzan revealed: “She was living in a house with six other people, kind of a frat-house vibe, and on weekends she’d go to Amsterdam and sleep in bunk beds in a youth hostel, or to some music festival in northern England and sleep in a tent. She’s not precious at all.”
The housemates bought on so nicely that in 2015, 4 of them — Robbie, Ackerley, Sophia Kerr and Josey McNamara — based manufacturing firm, Lucky Chap. Now value an estimated £25 million, it’s remit is to “make female stories”, producing I, Tonya in 2017, Promising Young Woman, staring Carey Mulligan, in 2020 — each of which received Oscars — and now Barbie.
Working collectively introduced Robbie and Ackerley — the Guildford-born son of an property agent and, Margot as soon as mentioned, “the best looking man in London” — nearer — however they hid the romance from flatmates at first.
“We kept it a secret, because we weren’t really taking it seriously: ‘Oh, whatever, we’re just mates. And then everyone found out,’ she said, adding: “Our house turned into The Jerry Springer Show for a moment. Everyone was, like: ‘No! This is going to ruin our group!’ But the dust settled, and it was all good.”
Yet regardless that buddies knew, the remainder of the world didn’t. There was no engagement announcement and no suggestion they have been set to marry in any respect till Margot was pictured at Gold Coast airport in December 2016 carrying a T-shirt with the slogan “Say ‘I Do’ Down Under.”
Her fancy-dress hen do, held at a pal’s home in Australia, was attended by 45 ladies, together with 16 college buddies referred to as ‘The Heckers’ and was “absolute carnage”, mentioned Robbie, not least as a result of her Clapham buddies flew out for the bash: “They are a rowdy bunch, too, and the combination was explosive.”
Her buddies employed a Harry Potter-themed stripper — ‘he had all the Harry Potter phrases and innuendoes. I was so touched; it was really such a thoughtful thing to do. They know me so well.’
The marriage ceremony was held in Byron Bay and Margot’s mom gave her away. Robbie described the nuptials as “lovely, just chilled, you didn’t have to wear shoes”.
The couple skipped a honeymoon to work on I, Tonya: “There were times we were sitting in a car parked in Atlanta freezing cold, being like: ‘We should be on a beach — we should be on a honeymoon. What are we doing?!’ Following our dream,” she mentioned, including that married life “is actually the most fun ever” and that “I have a responsibility being someone’s wife, I want to be better”.
She and Ackerley left their home share for their very own house in West London earlier than transferring to Los Angeles in 2017.
Films comparable to Bombshell, in 2019, co-starring Nicole Kidman, and Babylon with Brad Pitt in 2022, have consolidated Margot’s standing, whereas her sanity within the leisure world’s epicentre comes courtesy of her beloved Harry Potter books: “Reading Harry Potter makes me happy and calms me. I read for about an hour to two hours every night. My husband hates it.”
Her long-standing penchant for Love Island, which she described as “actually essentially the most addictive factor on TV and mentioned reminds her ‘of living in London — watching it with my girlfriends”, has also remained.
On her 31st birthday in July 2021, she hosted a Love Island-themed party, for which she wore a pink bikini and Perspex heels, and turned her house into the Casa Amor villa, replete with bucking bronco and heart-shaped ice sculpture.
Whatever the future holds for Margot it seems likely she’ll preserve these Love Island-inspired stilettoes on the bottom, her motto, no matter life throws at her, being: “Someone’s going to do it, so it might as well be you.”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
