#this was years ago but the first role where I got the joker vibe

[sigurism]

Boyd Holbrook Run All Night Dir: Jaume Collet-Serra

[unordinary-analysis]

Episode 168

Honorable mentions:

I once had an ongoing list of the UnOrdinary world like a research page but then it disappeared somehow in my google docs (still dunno how), but I’m thinking of recreating it if only for my list of places in UnOrdinary because I can’t remember if Newside is a new place or if we’ve been there before in the story. And that upsets me.

I just want to bring back that time about a year ago (yes I’m old) when I did an analysis on the superhero posse when they were just becoming the superhero posse. If you search up #episode 117in my tags, you’ll find it, but I remember putting the three into a small ladder hierarchy based on how much authority they were giving off and I said 1. Blyke, 2. Remi, 3. Isen. I’m very happy that even a year ago, Blyke was displaying signs of leadership. I put his name down as having the most authority within the group, but I was kind of surprised when I did that, even then. Past me knew, past me could tell the future (AN: I suggest looking at that actually the lineup if just so good)

the flow of this post is kind of choppy I think so sorry for that

Blyke: 

    So: yes, I’m finally talking about Blyke again. Sorry about not mentioning him last week, I just really was focused on John for that one and the post would’ve felt less cohesive if I wrote about Blyke too. Also, there wasn’t much development on Blyke’s storyline in that episode except basically telling you that, yeah, it’s confirmed that Blyke is going to attempt to become a “superhero” (actually kind of a big deal but you all already knew so eh). I’ve been closed too much for initially thinking that Blyke would dabble in ability enhancement drug use, and someone even agreed with me :(. But yeah I was wrong (sadly. Think of the potential). Anyway, moving forwards into the episode, it was obviously very Blyke heavy and, along with the whole superhero things, there’s some other stuff I want to talk about. 

    Something that I noticed being throughout the episode was that there were a lot of Blyke/King comparisons. First of all there was Blyke putting both him and Isen into Arlo’s perspective when Isen was complaining about Arlo. That was definitely pretty obvious to me that Uru-Chan is trying to compare the two often, because these have been often lately, so that the readers catch on to how they are becoming more similar in personality and thoughts, stuff like that. Almost entirely, though, how Blyke keeps thinking of Arlo and what Arlo would be thinking. Arlo is literally the representation of power and authority in this comic, his personality is almost defined by being king. Blyke slowly thinking more and more like him is suggesting the fact that Blyke is becoming more and more king-like, probably due to his inevitable crowning as Wellston’s new king (maybe? I’m not sure how that works with John and all?)

    This is close to another example of Blyke being compared to authority/the king/Arlo (?) in this episode because Blyke, around the middle of the episode, starts talking about how Arlo won’t be here next year and the other high-tiers will need to take over. He says, “So, whether we want it or not… I think we owe it to the school to take some responsibility… And start treating our roles more seriously.” The leadership jumped out. Anyway, he’s obviously very aware of the high-tiers’ responsibilities and seems to just decided that he needs to carry them out. I don’t really know what I’m saying but basically: Blyke has been paying attention to the school’s status, assessed how best to handle the situation, and has just taken the responsibility on his shoulders without anyone, a.k.a. the king, telling him to. He is acting like a leader, more so out of any of the other high-tiers.

    There’s a bit more things that connect Blyke and kingship, or general authority, in this episode, but most of it is just in like way of thinking or vibes, and that’s difficult and unnecessary to explain in this post. Just, the comparisons are obvious pointing to one outcome: Blyke’s crowning as the new king of Wellston. I already said in this post that it’s inevitable. And everyone pretty much knows that it’s going to happen. Even all of the characters. This is just important to be aware of because of where his storyline is headed. Blyke is trying to become a superhero to become stronger, to grow more powerful, and yes it’s because he wants to take down John, to feel like he’s competent enough to be king, but it is inherently a very risky decision. There’s a lot of things that could go wrong and I just want to remind everyone of Rei, who was also a superhero and king. And we all know how that turned out. I do think that Blyke wouldn’t continue to be a superhero forever, maybe even no longer than a few episodes, so what happened with Rei is unlikely to ever happen with Blyke, but there are still those possibilities that could occur because of this decision.

    Finally: superhero. Blyke has decided to become a superhero, and lowkey I’m really excited. I know I was just talking about how risky it could be, especially for a future king, but guys I just want more Blyke fight scenes don’t you? We are being fed okay? Anyway, he’s made it clear he’s doing it to get stronger and that he’s made sure that he’s taking less risks than Remi did (which is very great thank you Blyke 100% leader material). I don’t really have much to say about this because there really isn’t anything to analyze or anything, I just have to say that I really appreciate how you can just tell that this was thought through by Blyke so much more than Remi thought about her plan, she was really all about instincts. This new take on the superhero mantle is very ‘Blyke’, you know?

    Anyway, the whole superhero thing being reintroduced into the story isn’t just for Blyke’s convenience because I am 100% certain this is a way for uru-Chan to show us again the world of EMBER and that storyline because it has been a while. And this is a very efficient way to expose some of the inner workings behind all that, so I am very excited to see that next week.

    Isen:

    Poor, poor, poor baby Isen. He just wants peace. And then people keep involving him in their messes, what a shame. 

    There aren’t really any new developments on him and things basically stand the same as when I last talked about Isen (about his and Arlo’s drama) but there’s a few things I want to talk about concerning Isen and things that happened in this episode helped me decide to talk about them so yeah.

    First thing I want to talk about is Isen’s new anger towards Arlo. I know anger is a harsh word and I think I mean something closer to irritation, but still, I like seeing this from Isen because Isen really has been taking a lot of Arlo’s shit, of everybody’s shit. And I’m kind of intrigued by the possibilities of where this might go. Now, I know Isen is a more docile character, he likes to keep his distance from drama (I actually talk about this in the second thing I want to talk about), but his drama with Arlo is literally about Arlo not letting him be. And I realize here that I could make an entire rant about how this is a parallel to what John and Arlo went though, and how Arlo keeps pushing people into the light and causing issues, but I won’t, even though I easily could with what I’m gonna say. Basically: I’m looking at the possibility of Isen truly rebelling against Arlo, even though we got a big blow up last week from Isen at Arlo so that was nice. I want more tears, fighting, betrayals. Okay? I want Isen to join Joker and Cecile (whaaat you did not hear me say that). Anyway, I’ve always been interested in the idea of normally calm characters going absolutely berserk, and I think everyone has. Plus I think it’s likely what with all of Isen’s sleep talk of, “GET BACK HERE AND SAY THAT TO MY FACE, ARLO!” 

    Second thing I want to talk about is how Isen is obviously anti-responsibility. His whole thing with Arlo is that Arlo dragged Isen to do work that Isen didn’t want to do, and even this episode, Isen interrupts Blyke, who was trying to say that they would have a lot of future responsibilities, because he didn’t like the topic. Isen is so obviously ill-suited for authority and he’s been saying it throughout the comic. I remember that I went through of phase of literally only liking Isen and thinking he was the best character ever, so I can’t speak for what I’ve said during that time (don’t remember), but I know that Isen wants as little to do with the hierarchy as possible (which is why he’d side with joker people, joker wants the hierarchy gone too im sorry). Anyway, this is just something I want to establish as something I think. Isen wants literally nothing to due with responsibility, and honestly, same. This is kind of a big deal, but because this is pretty recurring and I don’t really know how to explain why this is a big deal, we’ll just stop here.

[diyunho]

The Joker x Reader -“Obsession”

The Joker has an obsession: you. He doesn’t really need another one added to the pile but…anyway, here it is. Brace yourself  you lucky girl - you’re in for a treat. 

Related to this: http://diyunho.tumblr.com/post/162770482096/the-joker-x-reader-yuki

– He keeps on dropping things on purpose so you can pick them up, this way he can stare at your butt.

You know, for being the Joker, your boyfriend is pretty clumsy: he keeps on dropping stuff all the time. Like, right now, he just dropped his pen and you are fast to bend over and get it for him.

Intense purring immediately follows.

– J took you shopping and you were so excited when you smelled “Gucci Guilty” for men. You thought it’s a divine scent and he got 10 bottles without you knowing, replacing his current cologne with the Gucci one. He has those stashed all over the place while he still keeps in sight his usual fragrance: Clive Christian - “No.1” .

You have a feeling he smells like “Gucci Guilty”.

“Are you wearing Gucci Guilty?” you sniff the air around him with a huge smile on your face.

“Nope,” The Joker keeps on piling up money in boxes, trying to ignore you.

“Are you sure?” the insistent question pops up because you got a vibe you’re onto something here.

“I think I know since I’m the one that put it on, hm? Stop pestering me!!!” he barks your way and you just turn around, biting on your lip, stricken with fascination: your boyfriend does smell like GG, no point in denying it. Where is the damn bottle? (Well… bottles, but you have no clue there are 10 of them).

– You love knives; they are your favorite weapons. Mister J believes it’s classy as hell: in a world of guns, his girl is sooo stylish using sharp blades. You don’t know yet, but he ordered 50 personalized gold plated knives with your initials on them. He plans to give them to you for your 2 year anniversary.

* J totally loves it when you use him as target practice: such a turn on when the blades shriek by him, he gets very impatient.

“Don’t move, baby, I wouldn’t wanna cut something you might need to use later, hm?” you always wink at him, teasing even more just because you can.

Your boyfriend loves guns. So you will surprise him for you 2 year anniversary with a special gift: you will order 20 personalized guns for him from the place that all Gotham’s underworld knows about. Upfront they sell jewelry but the basement it’s a different story.

“I want to order 20 customized guns: half green, half purple background, gold plated,” you start your order.

“Sure, may I ask who they’re for? We can personalize even more,” the guy offers, pointing towards the multitude of catalogues lying around.

“Daddy,” you reply, absent minded since some fancy grenades caught your eye.

“How old?”

“Ummm…Probably… around 39,” you debate, deep in thought.

“Oohhh, OK,” the seller finally understands.”Got’cha!”

You smack your lips and it clicks for the person.

“Hold on, is the order for Mister J ?”

“Of course it’s for him, who else?!” you frown, irritated by the question.

“Oh my God, so sorry, I didn’t recognized you with this purple hair!”

“Whatever!” you grumble, grouchy he needed so many hints to figure it out.

“Would you also like to add his logo on all the guns?”

You roll your eyes, exasperated:

“Well, duh, HE IS The Joker, isn’t he???!!!!”

“Such a Goddam temper,” he thinks, aiming not to annoy you since you are famous for your short fuse.

* You totally love it when J uses you as target practice: such a torn on when the bullets shriek by your ears, you get very impatient.

“Don’t move, Pumpkin, I wouldn’t want to shoot something you might need later, yes?” and he always takes his shirt off, teasing even more just because he can.

– He likes to watch you sleep. Sometimes The Joker spends hours just staring at you. One night he cut off a small strand of your hair and hid it in the nob of his favorite cane since it’s hollow, this way he always has a piece of you with him. He detests being so infatuated but he can’t help it.

You like to watch your boyfriend sleep; you spend hours just staring at him. One night you cut off a strand of his hair and hid it in the pendant he gave you last year and never part with, this way you always have a piece of him with you. You hate it that you are so infatuated but can’t help it.

And you love his hands. When he’s asleep, you just like to look at his fingers, pressing your palm against his, caressing the soft skin. Sometimes he wakes up.

“What are you doing, Princess?” he opens just one eye, not knowing what’s going on.

“Nothing,” you are fast to reply, kissing his knuckles and keeping one of his hands prisoner for the rest of the night.

– Once every 3 months or so, your boyfriend is in a good mood so you try to take advantage of the rare occurrence. This time, for example, you convinced J to let you put makeup on him because you want to have an idea on how he looked like before the “Ace Chemicals” incident. A little bit of foundation to cover the scars and tattoos, bringing the skin and lips to a natural tone plus a dark blonde wig with a similar haircut to cover the toxic green locks.

“Wow, you were so gorgeous before too!” you gasp, admiring your work and how flawless The Joker seems. In your opinion, of course; Batsy wouldn’t share the same belief.“So this is how you looked like before?!”

“More or less,” he smirks, loving to see you so worked up about the whole thing. “Can’t argue with that statement though, I am a very good looking guy.”

You take a picture of him like that and set it up as your new screensaver, gulping when he gets up all shirtless, taking the wig off, being done with the experiment. A miracle doesn’t last for long - just like his patience.

“I’m gonna go and wash this stuff off,” he stretches and heads towards the bathroom when you block his way.

“Noooot so fast, handsome. I was kind of thinking to have a one night stand with this stranger I’ve just met,” you lock your arms around his neck, determined to have fun with him like that.

“Well, this stranger’s services are very expensive. I come with a high price. Still interested?” The Joker grumbles in your ear because he doesn’t want to say no to some crazy stuff for sure.

You just snicker and push him on the couch, starting to undress.

* Later you both go to one of your clubs to enjoy a night out. While you change your dress in the VIP room upstairs, one of the waitresses brings J his drink, thinking she can finally get you in trouble with your man. She despises you but you wouldn’t know since you never pay attention to those girls.

“E-hem, Mister J?…” she clears her throat, getting ready to talk crap.

“What?” he snarls, watching over the club from behind the smoky windows.

“Sir, I’m sorry to bring the bad news, but I think your girlfriend is cheating on you,” she blurs out and he lifts his chin up to finally look at her.

“Is she?”

“Yes, Mister J, I saw it with my own eyes. Y/N keeps on glaring at the screen saver she has on her phone; definitely not your picture sir. I caught her kissing the image and she turned off the cell right away, pretending nothing happened.”

He sighs, tapping his cane on the floor.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir, I swear!” a smile appears on her face, happy you are probably a goner now.

“That woman! How dares she?!” J huffs and pushes her away, then strolls upstairs while she silently follows.

He barges in the VIP room, slamming the silver door behind him.

“Almost done, baby,” you cheerfully announce, putting on another coat of mascara.

“Who is that asshole on your phone?” he raises his voice and the waitress bites on her nails, enticed at your misfortune.

“Umm…My boyfriend?” you giggle and turn to face him, wondering if you’re playing roles again.

“Boyfriend?! How dare you sleeping with somebody else behind my back, huh?” and he tosses the cane to the floor with all his strength, making the woman jump on the other side of the door.

Oh, she’s gonna get it ! she victoriously chuckles to herself, silently clapping.

You are going to get it, but not in the way she thinks.

“I couldn’t help it,” you play along, not having a clue about what’s going on but if he wants to go this way, heeeeyy, works for you.

“You are so paying for this, nobody cheats on me!!!!” J yells, starting to rip your dress off while you do the same with his shirt.

She’s going to pay for it ! I hope he kills her, the woman gets all excited, waiting for the bad turn she is responsible for.

You are going to pay for it, but not in the way she thinks.

She hears a loud thud, your scream and The Joker grunting, then …moans?!

What the hell is going on?!  she wonders, baffled, still listening at the door for a few more moments before leaving.

Needless to say nobody saw her again after that night. Who knows what happened? People disappear all the time, right?

– You can fix things and J goes insane for it. He breaks shit on purpose. “Doll, we have a water leak under the kitchen sink !” he shouts and places his elbows on the table, waiting for you.

“Again?!” you reply from the balcony, but go and get the tool box so you can take a look. You get under the sink and begin to work on the problem.

Intense purring immediately follows.

You don’t know how, but something always breaks around the penthouse. It’s a mystery since everything is the best quality money can buy. Like, why do you have another water leak under the sink?! You just had one two days ago. And The Joker is purring so loud. Why is he all excited about?!  

– You love huskies so J got you a puppy. Best present ever! Since you love Japanese names, you named the fur ball Yuki. The first trick you taught your doggie makes you melt when you watch it in action:

“Yuki, go bite Daddy!” The puppy jumps from your lap and charges at your boyfriend, grabbs his shoelace and pulls on it while growling up a storm:

“Grrrrrrr!!! Grrrrr!!! Grrrrrr!!!!”

J would love to break its neck, but how can you kill something that kind of growls like you?!

“Cut it out, mutt !” he threatens but bends over to pet the puppy. He hears you whistling with admiration.

“Wow, nice ass baby!”

* The puppy likes to sleep on your tummy. You are watching a movie with J and it’s boring so you need something more interesting to see.

“Yuki, go bite Daddy!”  The doggie’s ears go straight up and he rushes to get the enemy, pulling on the t-shirt he didn’t take off yet.

“Grrrrrr!!!! Grrrrr!!!! Grrrrrr!!!!!!!!!”

“So annoying!” The Joker complains, but caresses the fluffy pest and as a response he gets licked all over his face. And barked at too, in between.

You are absolutely and utterly thrilled.

“Now I have two sets of blue eyes I adore,” you grin with admiration, and your boyfriend doesn’t like that.

“I’m the only one you adore. Period,” and he starts growling.

Yuki’s tail wiggles with eagerness while jumping up and down by The Joker.

“Grrrr!!! Grrrrrr!!! Grrrrr!!”

J growls some more; Yuki is stunned and continues to growl also.

“Are you two having a contest?” you start laughing, reaching over to separate the two feisty males. The puppy cuddles in your arms, barking at his other owner.

When The Joker’s arm reaches towards you, Yuki hops on it, keeping it in place, not having any of it.

“Stop it, mutt ! I need my girl!”

His fingers are softly getting chewed on and more growling follows.

“Seriously?! I want to have sex with my woman, get lost!” and Yuki gets lift up and locked outside the master bedroom, but not before it gets more petting and squeezing. His intention was to break the puppy’s neck, but how can you kill something that kind of growls like you?!

– J hopes you are not going to notice how much he’s obsessed with you. It will get to your head and he already spoils you too much.

You hope that your boyfriend won’t notice how obsessed you are with him. It will get to his head and you already indulge his every whim. Even if he is soooo clumsy. Like, right now, J just dropped his gun and you are quick to bend over and get it for him.

Intense purring immediately follows.

Also read: MASTERLIST

http://diyunho(dot)tumblr(dot)com/post/153664676321/joker-x-reader-masterlist

[robbieinterviews]

Tarzan’s Margot Robbie on Why She’s No Damsel in Distress, 2016

When Margot Robbie popped up in The Big Short last year for a 60-second cameo—by definition, playing herself—to explain what “shorting” a bond means while drinking Dom Pérignon in the bathtub of a billionaire’s Malibu condo, I subconsciously shorted her. Here, it seemed, was that girl who invites you to stare and then tells you to fuck off if you stare for too long. The fact that just two years prior she so ferociously inhabited the role of the hottest gold digger in the history of cinema in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, permanently lodging herself in the collective male libido, served only to reinforce my concern that she might be some new breed of high-maintenance superpredator. Thankfully, the cameo turned out to be a clever little lie in a movie all about big fat ones. This was Margot Robbie playing her caricature—the retrograde Playboy fantasy in permanent soft-focus.

It comes as a surprise, then—a relief, even—to meet Robbie in April on the Santa Monica Pier and discover that she’s not remotely like the manipulative sex kittens she’s been so eerily good at portraying on the screen. It’s Robbie’s idea that we take a trapeze class together, and so here we are, smack dab in the middle of an amusement park over the water. Robbie, in yoga pants and a white tank top, her hair pulled up into a messy ponytail, goes entirely unrecognized, which has something to do with the fact that, dressed for a workout with no makeup, she looks like every third person you pass in Southern California—but prettier. She is smaller and more compact than I had imagined, and has the athletic mien of someone who played sports in high school, along with the graceful gait and natural poise of a woman who’s used to moving through the world on the balls of her feet like a dancer.

I assumed Robbie had taken up the trapeze for one of the very physically demanding roles she plays in two big studio movies coming out back-to-back this summer—Jane in The Legend of Tarzan, costarring Alexander Skarsgård and directed by David Yates, in July, followed by the cultishly beloved psychopath Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad, based on a task force of characters from DC Comics and directed by David Ayer, which comes out in August and seems bound to turn her into a household name—but I had assumed wrong. When Robbie was growing up in Australia, her mother sent her off to circus school—she received her “trapeze certificate�� when she was eight. She hadn’t given it a thought in years, though, until she began having a recurring dream not long ago in which she was flying through the air, high above the net under the big top. “I couldn’t stop thinking about that stupid dream,” she says, and so she found this place and took a few classes. “I feel like I missed my calling.” She chalks her hands and gets ready to climb up to the platform.

One of our instructors, Kenna, a daffy redhead wearing comically large yellow sunglasses, remembers Robbie from her last visit. As Kenna is buckling us into our safety harnesses, she asks Robbie what part of Australia she’s from. “Gold Coast in Queensland,” says Robbie, her accent thickening at the mere mention of her homeland. “I watch a lot of really trashy TV,” says Kenna, “including Australia’s Next Top Model, and the girls from Gold Coast are definitely not respected by girls from Sydney and Melbourne.” Robbie laughs knowingly and says no, but because she has just slipped into full-on Australian-accent mode, it comes out as neeerrroh! “I had no idea I was living in a state that gets laughed at until I moved to Melbourne,” says Robbie, “and then someone was like, ‘Ohrrr, yar from Queensland, eh? You put “Eh?” on the end of your sentences because you’re all a bit slow.’ And I was like, ‘Is this a thing? That Queensland is the dumb state?’ It’s so embarrassing.”

At that, another instructor, CR, appears to teach us the finer points of trapeze. There are moments of weightlessness at the peak of each swing from the bar, which is when you want to change positions, or “throw the trick.” “As long as you make the change at the right time,” he says, “you hardly have to break a sweat. It’s all about timing.”

Robbie (precisely, elegantly) throws one trick after another—the set split, the set straddle, the penny roll—with what looks like little effort. “She’s disgustingly good at it,” says Kenna as we stand on the pier watching her above us, and I cannot help thinking that these exact skills apply to Robbie’s life down here on the ground: She has consistently displayed a knack for making her moves at exactly the right moment, no sweat. At seventeen, with very little acting experience to speak of—a few school plays, some commercials, a low-budget flick she describes as “barely even a student film”—she moved to Melbourne and landed a part on the Australian soap opera Neighbours, the longest-running drama in the country’s history, a gig she had for three years. In 2011—after working very hard with a dialect coach to perfect an American accent—she moved to Los Angeles and immediately got a part on the short-lived TV series Pan Am. A supporting role in Richard Curtis’s coming-of-age rom-com About Time followed, and then she was cast as Naomi—that minx from Bay Ridge—in The Wolf of Wall Street. It was a career-defining performance, one that left people agape: Who’s that?

As Jared Leto, her costar in Suicide Squad, puts it, “She took a role that other people would have had a very difficult time with and elevated it to something spectacular. To be able to stand alongside Leo [DiCaprio], one of the titans of the industry, and be there face-to-face, blow for blow, and not only hold her ground but really shine, was kind of a rare, explosive discovery. It reminded me of Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface.”

At first, Robbie wasn’t even sure she wanted to play such a shrewd ballbuster. “When I first read it, I thought, I have nothing in common with her. I hate her. It was a really tricky one to get my head around. But her motivation was ‘You guys are doing it—why shouldn’t I? It’s this man’s world, and I’m going to get mine.’ And I understand that.”

The things she was doing herself as far as stunts, you wouldn’t believe. There’s only a handful of actors who do that sort of work

David Ayer

Now, two years later, at 25, she’s the girl of the moment, on the cusp of a very big summer. The Legend of Tarzan, as directed by Yates, who brought us the best of the Harry Potter movies, is an A-movie reboot of a B-movie franchise, one that the filmmakers hope will lift the character up out of the swamp of kitsch and into the twenty-first century. When Warner Bros.—having kept a close eye on the dailies while Robbie was shooting Focus with Will Smith in late 2013—approached her about playing Jane, her first reaction was: Not for me. “There’s no way I was going to play the damsel in distress,” she says. But then she read the script. “It just felt very epic and big and magical in some way. I haven’t done a movie like that. The Harry Potter films could have been really cheesy, but David Yates made them into something dark and cool and real—plus it was shooting in London, and I, on a whim, had just signed a lease on a house there.” For Yates, “an unpretentiousness, a real pragmatism, was evident from the moment I met her. There’s something very true about her, and those qualities were very important for Jane—someone who’s open to experience the beauty of the world.”

Naturally, sooner or later, Tarzan meets Jane. “I met her in L.A. about a year before we shot the movie,” says Skarsgård, “just before The Wolf of Wall Streetcame out. She lived in this tiny studio apartment in Hollywood. We were supposed to just have coffee and talk about the project, but we spent the entire day together. I remember being blown away by how cool and down-to-earth she was. And then Wolf came out, and she went from relative obscurity to being the hottest actress in Hollywood.” When Tarzan finally started shooting in London, “she was living in a house with six other people,” says Skarsgård, “kind of a frat-house vibe, and on weekends she would go to Amsterdam and sleep in bunk beds in a youth hostel with Canadian backpackers, or to some music festival in Northern England and sleep in a tent. She’s not precious at all.”

The story of Suicide Squad, meanwhile, is that all of the bad guys in the superhero world who are locked up in prison are offered a chance to do some good—a suicide mission, if you will—to get their sentences reduced. Harley Quinn is both the shrink and the girlfriend of the Joker, played by Leto. “She doesn’t even have superpowers,” says Robbie. “She’s just a psychopath who runs around gleefully killing people—she finds joy in causing mayhem, which makes her weirdly endearing and fun to watch.”

The role, says Ayer, demands “a lot of heavy lifting for an actor. But she’s a tough girl, and she’s incredibly smart and mature beyond her years. She has ridiculous depth, and she’s never been coddled, so she’s very physically courageous. The things she was doing herself as far as stunts, you wouldn’t believe. There’s only a handful of actors who do that sort of work themselves.”

Robbie was filming the underappreciated Whiskey Tango Foxtrot with Tina Fey in New Mexico just before she went off to Toronto to shoot Suicide Squad. “She had a personal trainer literally following her around the set so she could be ready for Suicide Squad,” says Fey. “She’s very strong. There’s a scene in Whiskey Tango where she punches me and says, ‘We’re going out tonight!’ I had this huge bruise on my arm for days.” Fey is crazy about Robbie. “She doesn’t take herself too seriously,” she says. “And she has that soap-opera background, which I think is great. Those people just make a choice and don’t overthink it. They don’t think that acting cures world hunger in and of itself.”

When our trapeze class comes to an end, we find Robbie’s driver. As we head back to her hotel in West Hollywood, her phone rings. It’s Robbie’s boyfriend of two years, Tom Ackerley, the assistant director she met in 2013 on the set of the World War II drama Suite Française. “Hi, darling,” she says into the phone. “Just mastered a new trick. . . . Yes, I’m very chuffed with myself.” (Later, when I ask about Ackerley—whom she describes as “the best-looking guy in London”—she says, “I was the ultimate single gal. The idea of relationships made me want to vomit. And then this crept up on me. We were friends for so long. I was always in love with him, but I thought, Oh, he would never love me back. Don’t make it weird, Margot. Don’t be stupid and tell him that you like him. And then it happened, and I was like, Of course we’re together. This makes so much sense, the way nothing has ever made sense before.”)

Ackerley is actually calling to talk business: He and Robbie—along with Ackerley’s friend Josey McNamara, who is also an AD, and Robbie’s childhood best friend, Sophia Kerr—started a production company, LuckyChap, a year ago. The four of them all live together in that house in London and are planning to move to Los Angeles later this year. They have already acquired five projects, one of which is the script for I, Tonya, the highly anticipated Tonya Harding biopic that Robbie will star in. (Robbie is a decent skater—she played on an amateur ice-hockey team when she moved to New York City in 2011 to shoot Pan Am.) Their first film, Terminal, a dystopian noir thriller, has just started shooting in Hungary. Robbie plays a waitress whose story line ties all the others together. “We chose the most challenging indie film imaginable—it’s not commercially viable from a financier’s point of view,” says Robbie. “It’s shaving years off my life. It’s really hard work, but so rewarding and much more empowering than just acting. I was starting to feel like a little pawn getting moved around the board: Go here! Do that! Be her!” “This is a very smart thing for her to do,” says Fey, “because otherwise, as a piece of casting, she’s always going to have someone saying, ‘You look amazing—but we’d love for you to weigh less.’ Already at 25 she’s like, You know what? I’m going to opt out of that fuckery and be on my front foot with my career.”

It’s early evening when we finally arrive at Robbie’s hotel. We walk past the bar, and bump into Sandy Powell, the legendary costume designer, who’s having a drink with a friend. As it happens, Powell did the costumes for The Wolf of Wall Street, and Robbie tells me that most of those tight, come-hither getups she wore were Powell’s actual clothes from the nineties. “I would say, ‘Where did you get that?’ and she would say, ‘It’s mine. I used to wear it all the time.’ ”

We pass the swimming pool, and there’s not a person in sight. “I so badly want to go for a swim,” she says. “Do you mind if I jump in the pool?” She runs off to her suite while I make myself at home on a chaise and order a drink. When she reappears, she’s wearing a white one-piece bathing suit with a vaguely suggestive cartoonish illustration of a half-peeled banana emblazoned on the front, and short-short denim cutoffs. She seems blissfully unaware that the suit looks like something that, say, Pamela Anderson would have worn in the nineties. This reminds me of something Cara Delevingne—who plays Enchantress in Suicide Squad—told me about Robbie. “I was having a conversation with her the other night at the MTV Movie Awards,” Delevingne said. “In this world of celebrity and Hollywood, so many people act like they’re being watched all the time—but Margot doesn’t act like that at all. She’s constantly dancing like no one’s watching.”

The whole fake-it-till-you-make-it thing has really worked out for me. You can apply that to anything—you just have to hustle

Margot Robbie

She peels off her Daisy Dukes and knifes into the water. At one point, she submerges herself just to the bottom of her nose. Suddenly, with her hair slicked back, I realize who she reminds me of: Margaux Hemingway, in a famous shoot from the seventies by Douglas Kirkland. Robbie gets out of the pool and lies down on the chaise next to me. I mention the resemblance, and she Googles her. “Wow,” she says. “What a stunner.”

Owing mostly to her surf-tastic teenage years, Robbie seems to prize a kind of athletic comfort above all else (though she does love the red carpet—“I think I enjoy the getting ready part more than the actual event, to be honest”). But her penchant for dressing down is also a tactical measure. Here at the hotel, as at the pier earlier, she goes completely unnoticed. “If I dress like this, people don’t look twice. It’s as soon as I put on makeup and a dress and have my hair done—I can’t get ten meters without being recognized.”

I bring up the various spellings of her name—Margaux, Margo, Margot. “I always said, ‘Mom—there was a really cool way of spelling my name, and you picked the boring way that gets everyone confused. They forget the T or call me Mar-got,’ ” she says, laughing. (Her childhood nickname was Maggot.) “Now everyone’s finally spelling my name right—that’s how I knew I’d made it.”

Robbie was raised with her three siblings by a single mother, Sarie Kessler, a physiotherapist, in a very small house (her parents divorced when she was young). “I adore my mother,” says Robbie. “She’s the most pure-hearted, divine human being.” We get to talking about the similarities in our childhoods: lots of kids, raised in a house with only one bathroom, everyone working to help make ends meet—the kind of setting that can scald one’s heart with ambition. “I went to a school where all of my friends were very well-off,” she says, “and I went to their houses a lot, and so I knew what it looked like to be rich but I didn’t have it, so I was like: OK—I know exactly what I want.” She worked several odd jobs—tending bar, making sandwiches, selling surfboards—which gave her a lot of confidence at a young age. “The whole fake-it-till-you-make-it thing has really worked out for me. The more times you do that, the more you realize that no one really knows what they’re doing; everyone’s kind of figuring it out or pretending they know until they do know. And you can apply that to anything—you just have to hustle.”

Robbie’s hustle—her resourcefulness, mixed with ambition and a little naïveté—has defined her career since before it even started. “I was watching TV one day—maybe I was fifteen,” she says. “There was a girl my age doing a scene, and she said her line, and it was just not that good. And I remember thinking, I could have done it better. And then I thought, Well, why is she doing it? Why isn’t it me?”

To a one, every person I spoke to about Robbie pointed out two things: her willingness to try anything and her uncanny ability to be good at everything. A couple of years ago, when there were still eight people living in that house in London, Robbie made a rule: No one can move in unless they get the house tattoo. So they found an artist named Pedro with a shop nearby, and one day, while Pedro was tattooing Ackerley, Robbie begged to have a go at it. “I have a bit of a morbid fascination with needles,” she says. “There’ve been a few instances when I’ve given piercings.” Pedro eventually handed over the gun, Ackerley relented, and, well, she got hooked. As a wrap gift after Tarzan, Sophia—her best friend/housemate/business partner—bought her a tattoo gun on eBay, and soon, between scenes while shooting Suicide Squad, says Robbie, “people would come into my trailer: ‘Hey, Margs—can I get a tattoo?’ ‘Sure—sit on down!’ ” She even gave Delevingne something she dubbed “toemojis”—five emoji faces on the bottoms of her toes. “And then we all decided to get Squad tattoos, David Ayer included,” says Robbie. Now she travels with her tattoo kit everywhere she goes.

We head up to her hotel suite, where Sophia is hard at work on LuckyChap, and before long Robbie has set up her tattoo emporium on the dining-room table. The Rolling Stones are blaring from a laptop, and she’s giving me my very first tattoo. We had discussed it earlier—in theory—and settled on the Roman numeral five (V) because my birthday is May 5 and the V stands for my last name. And, well, why not—anything for a story, no? She sketched out a few ideas in my notebook, and then on my arm, and then, after few false starts, in a matter of minutes, it’s done. I love it, I say. “I’m so happy,” she says. Suddenly, Sophia shouts, “Oh, my God! Look at the moon!” and we both jump up and join her at the sliding glass doors. The three of us stare in silence for a moment at the biggest, brightest, orange-est moon any of us have ever seen. And then Margot Robbie, whose own star is burning awfully bright right now, says, “The moon is glistening. Literally. We’re listening to the Rolling Stones. And I just gave you a tattoo. So perfectly Hollywood!”