Margot Robbie has shared how her accent was ‘too Aussie’ – even for the Australian soap opera, Neighbours.
The Queensland-born actress revealed that producers asked her to tone down her ocker twang when she won the role of Donna Freedman on the series back in 2008.
‘I haven’t done really an Aussie accent since I was on Neighbours,’ she said in a recent chat with Graham Norton.
‘This isn’t as Queensland…my accent used to be so strong.’
Margot continued: ‘They got a dialect coach for me because I was too Australian for Neighbours.
‘I was like, I couldn’t hear that I had a bad accent, so I was like, “what do ya mean”,’ the 35-year-old joked, while demonstrating her natural accent.
Margot Robbie has shared how her accent was ‘too Aussie’ – even for the Australian soap opera, Neighbours. Pictured on The Graham Norton Show
The star explained that she worked with a dialect coach to tone down her natural speech.
‘They were like, “you’re just awful to listen to. We’re going to send you off to work with this woman, and it’ll round out your accent”,’ Margot said.
Prior to making the jump to Hollywood, Robbie’s profile grew considerably thanks to her work on Australian television, and especially on the long-running soap opera Neighbours, which came to an end in 2025 after 40 years on the air.
Robbie’s initial run on the series was from 2008 through 2011, when she appeared on more than 350 episodes.
She also had guest spots on the Australian shows City Homicide and Review With Myles Barlow in 2008, but she has primarily focused on film acting since her 2013 breakthrough.
Her latest major film is a new adaptation of Emily Brontë’s iconic novel Wuthering Heights.
It comes after Margot revealed the outrageous gift one of her male co-stars gave her early on in her career in a new interview amid the release of her new Wuthering Heights adaptation.
During a video interview for Complex with Charli XCX — who wrote and performed original songs for the Emerald Fennell–directed romance — for Complex, Robbie revealed that the unnamed actor gave her a book that she thought essentially told her to ‘eat less.’
The Queensland-born actress revealed that producers asked her to tone down her ocker twang when she won the role of Donna Freedman on the series back in 2008. Pictured on Neighbours
‘They were like, “you’re just awful to listen to. We’re going to send you off to work with this woman, and it’ll round out your accent”,’ Margot said
‘Very, very early in my career, an actor I worked with, a male actor, gave me a book called Why French Women Don’t Get Fat,’ the actress recalled when she was asked about the worst gift she had ever received.
‘It was essentially a book telling you to eat less,’ Robbie continued in reference to the book, which was written by Mireille Guiliano and published in 2007.
Robbie, who stars opposite Euphoria star Jacob Elordi in Wuthering Heights, recalled her outrage at her male costar after he gave her the book.
‘I was like, “Whoa, f*** you, dude”,’ she said.
She said she was given the book ‘really back in the day,’ and she suggested that it wasn’t an A-lister who had presented it to her, because she had ‘no idea where he would even be now.’
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