Margot Robbie is undeniably beautiful—which made playing "ugly" a real eye opener.
Gracing the cover of Harper's Bazaar, Robbie explains how enlightening it was to transform herself to play Queen Elizabeth I in Focus Features' Mary Queen of Scots (in theaters Dec. 7). When she would emerge makeup trailer in costume, Robbie claims her colleagues' attitudes would change. "I'd say, 'Hey, how's your weekend?' But they wouldn't even get close to me," she says. "It was very alienating. And I felt very lonely. It was an interesting social experiment."
To embody her character, who was scarred by smallpox as a young woman, Robbie sat in the hair and makeup chair for three and a half hours daily. "They'd start with a head wrap, gelling and pinning my hair down," she says. "Then we'd do a bald cap." Robbie had different wigs for different plot points, and prosthetic scarring was also applied to her face. "Surprisingly," she admits, "the quick part was the white makeup and the heavily drawn-on blush, eyebrows, lips."
According to the undeniably beautiful star, it was a refreshing process—one that allowed her to dive deeper into the role. "Normally there's someone who steps in and says, 'No, keep all the girls looking pretty!' But Josie Rourke, the director, was keen to explore how Queen Elizabeth's looks affected her relationships," the 28-year-old actress says. "Everyone had the guts to do it."
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