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Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie discuss Barbie’s surprising feminism


When Hollywood actor and producer Margot Robbie began toying with the idea of a Barbie movie, it was the doll’s polarising success that attracted her to it.
“People feel really strongly about Barbie. Some people love Barbie. Some people have a lot of problems with Barbie. But everyone has an associated memory with Barbie,” Robbie told ABC 7.30.

“It just felt like we could ignite something with it […] it seems like over the last 64 years, it hasn’t taken much for Barbie to ignite conversation or sometimes, you know, revolutions or protests.”
The challenge, Robbie explained, was to find a writer who could embrace the subject in its complexity.

Robbie turned to Greta Gerwig who had just finished filming her acclaimed movie Little Women.
“She’s very intelligent,” Robbie said.

“You can feel that in how her scripts and stories and characters are constructed and how they kind of come at you and it still feels really … it doesn’t feel heady.
“But you can tell there’s a lot of thought behind it. And there’s a lot of heart most importantly. And the humour is there.”

Robbie said Gerwig had the ability to capture the cultural moment.
“You can speak to her for five minutes and know that she just has her finger on the pulse of where society is at today,” she said.
“And that’s exactly what we needed for Barbie, someone who would be able to honour the legacy and also have a culturally relevant conversation with where we are today.”
To Gerwig, the challenge was also terrifying — a potential career killer.
“Number one that there wasn’t a story,” she said.
“And all of that feeling that Margot was talking about of people like loving it, hating it […] there’s a lot of places you could put a foot wrong, and then you’d be off on a terrible tangent.”
Gerwig wrote the script with her partner Noah Baumbach. She quickly realised she didn’t want anyone else to direct it.
Together with Robbie, they persuaded toy company Mattel to trust them to take risks with their iconic valuable product.
“We have to be up-front and let you know that we’re not going to shy away from the problematic parts of this,” Robbie said.
“Otherwise, it’s not a movie we’re interested in making. But it will come from a place of love, it will come from a place of respect, because I absolutely have respect for anyone that can make a toy [with] sustained popularity for 60-something years.”
Ahead of the film’s opening in Australia, the women were reluctant to share the specific points of contention they had with Mattel.
“Well, luckily, we made a crazy enough script that it was literally the whole thing,” Gerwig said.
Mattel decided to trust the pair, but not to the point of accepting a description of the movie as a feminist film. Gerwig has no doubt.
“It most certainly is a feminist film,” she said.
“It’s that diving into the complexity of it and not running away from it.
“Looking at all the thorniness and stepping into what is the negotiation of what women need to be, and how to give them something other than a tightrope to walk on, is how it feels feminist to me.”
In the movie, Barbie’s perfect pink world of high fashion and endless parties is disrupted when she suddenly finds herself having dark thoughts about death. She finds cellulite on her perfect legs and her famous feet suddenly become flat.
With the encouragement of the wise “Weird Barbie” played by Kate McKinnon, Barbie embarks on a journey of self-discovery in the real world, with Ken inviting himself along for the ride.
The idea of female insecurity becomes part of Barbie’s story, with Robbie and Gerwig exploring the moment when a teenage girl begins to question her sense of self and worth.
“It’s like, there’s this age where suddenly you become self-conscious,” Robbie explained. “And you kind of like hide yourself instead.”
Gerwig says Barbie finds comfort in the words of a young character called Gloria, played by America Ferrera.
“I think for me, I’ve seen this movie, obviously more than anyone else on planet Earth, and I’m still touched by that ability for a woman to look at another woman and say, ‘You’re good enough’.”
Barbie opens in cinemas across the country on July 20.

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‘I am officially off the market’: When Margot Robbie revealed she made the ‘conscious’ decision of not dating actors


Margot Robbie revealed her decision to not date actors because of the media scrutiny that came with a public relationship of two high-profile actors
Back in 2015, A-lister Margot Robbie made a declaration that she would not be dating any actors. The actress may have alluded to her fiance Tom Ackerley, who she married the following year in 2016. In an exclusive interview with Marie Claire, she revealed that being in a relationship as an actor herself came with its own set of challenges. She believed that dating someone who was popular would add on to the media scrutiny.

Margot Robbie opened up on why she made a conscious decision to not date actorsTalking to Marie Claire, she claimed, “I am officially off the market.” She then shared the reasoning behind her decision and added, “I made a conscious decision not to date actors.” She continued to explain, “But not because I hate actors. That’s a nasty generalization to make, and that’s not the case. People take such an interest in your love life when you have a profile, it puts a lot of stress on a relationship.”
The Barbie actress continued, “So two people with profiles, I figure it’s just double the amount of scrutiny, and I’d like to avoid that at all costs.” This came after reports of her locking lips with Tarzan co-star Alexander Skarsgard started making rounds. It was reported that she was caught kissing the actor during the Sundance Film Festival.

Margot Robbie revealed she opted for a minimal lifestyle even after becoming an actorIn the interview, Robbie also opened up about how she was adapting to fame. She shared, “I have a normal 24-year-old life. 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 in the same house with the same housemates, hang out with the same people.”
However, Margot Robbie tied the knot with Tom Ackerley who is an English producer and actor. The duo met on the sets of 2013 movie Suite Francaise where Tom was working as an assistant director. Post marriage, both of them launched their production company LuckyChap Entertainment.

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Monica Bellucci and Tin Burton at lunch in the restaurant in Selci Lama


For All Saints’ Day, the Hollywood star from Tiferno returned to his native Umbria to enjoy a moment of relaxation and then visit his parentsOn the occasion of the All Saints’ Day celebrations, the Hollywood star of Tiferno origin, Monica Bellucci, returned to her native Umbria to enjoy a moment of relaxation and to visit her father Pasquale and her mother Brunella.Flanked by her current partner Tim Burton, she went to lunch, together with about twenty old friends, at the Osteria del Musicista, which has always been her favorite restaurant, in Selci Lama.Menu dedicated to typical dishes of the area, which includes an appetizer with breadsticks lined with coppa, duck in porchetta and grilled pork livers, polenta with wild boar sauce accompanied by the very typical cappelletti in broth.To conclude, a dessert based on fried “ciaccia” with Nutella and roasted chestnuts.
Having paid the bill and greeted the restaurant owner and lifelong friend, Roberto Polchi, Monica brought home cappelletti and broth for a family dinner.

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‘Rocky’ Was Quite Different In His Original Screenplay, Sylvester Stallone Claims


Sylvester Stallone took his friend’s advice on a rewrite of the original screenplay to Rocky. A few tweaks later, he was on his way to major success.
In the new Netflix documentary Sly, Stallone discussed how he initially conceived of the project, which had a much harder edge. In the early version, Rocky was depicted as a “thuggish” character, inspired by Martin Scorsese’s crime drama, Mean Streets.

But Stallone’s perspective changed when a friend read the script and thought the boxer was too cruel for audiences to actually care about him.
Stallone recalled her crying.

“She goes, ‘I hate Rocky. I hate him. He’s cruel. He hits people. He beats them up.’”
Stallone took it to heart, and asked what he could do to soften the character.

“I said, ‘what if you stop short of it?’ Like, maybe he almost did. He could have, that’s his job, but he doesn’t?’ ‘That’d be nice,’” he added. “I said, ‘What if he had a girlfriend or something?’ ‘Yeah, that’s nice.’ So I go back, start writing that: ‘Girlfriend. Nice.’”
$117 million in box office later, a franchise was born.

Stallone also revealed that actor Dolph Lundgren sent him to the hospital during one fight scene in Rocky IV.
“Dolph Lundgren… he pulverized me,” Stallone says in the documentary. “Later that night, my heart started to swell—which happens when the heart hits the chest—and then my blood pressure went up to 260, and they thought I was going to be talking to angels. Next thing I know, I’m in intensive care, where I’m surrounded by nuns, and I thought, ‘OK, that’s curtains.’”
Stallone was in the hospital for nine days following the incident, praying for “one more round.”
“For the first minute of the fight, it is going to be a free-for-all,” Stallone told Lundgren. The Swedish actor joked in a separate interview that all he did was “obey orders,” explaining, “[Stallone] was the boss. I did what he told me.”
Doctors allegedly told Stallone that he received a blow to the ribs that made his heart rattle around in his ribcage, a condition typically seen in head-on collisions. “I did hit a bus, of sorts,” Stallone joked.

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