How Margot Robbie Completely Transformed Into Barbie

Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" is officially the movie of summer 2023. In its opening weekend alone, it brought in $155 million at the box office. The live-action doll movie stars Margot Robbie as Stereotypical Barbie, who travels from Barbieland to the real world and discovers what it means to be human. She's accompanied by her slightly dim boyfriend, Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, who discovers, well, the patriarchy. 

As Barbie, Robbie is unlike anything we have seen from her before. From her perfectly coiffed blonde wig to her deadpan doll expression to her perfect high-arch Barbie feet, it's almost as if she really were made of plastic. And that's not the only transformation Robbie underwent while filming "Barbie" — she also let the doll into her psyche as well. In fact, when asked by Australian presenters about the double meaning of the word "barbie," the Aussie forgot that in Australia, a barbie is, of course, a barbecue. "Oh!" she said as she realized. "I'm so Barbie now I can't even."

The actor's transformation into the Mattel doll we all know and love was certainly remarkable. Here's how Robbie and the "Barbie" team made it happen.

Getting into the Barbie mindset before filming required some preparation on Margot Robbie's part. "I suppose I mentally began becoming Barbie as soon as I read the script," Robbie told Teen Vogue. Then, she started researching, heading to the Mattel headquarters to find out about the history of Barbie. "I also did watch, you know, Barbie documentaries, did read about the creator, Ruth Handler," she said. She even watched a few of Barbie's vlogs on her YouTube channel.

To get in the Barbei mindset, Robbie also decorated her trailer with lots of girly, pink decor and sentimental items to keep her mood positive (and Barbie-like) throughout the process. "I went all out for this character of Barbie," she said. To complete her transformation, Robbie chose a Barbiesque perfume. "That's always the final thing for my character. As soon as I put my character perfume on ... then I was like, 'Okay, ready,'" she recalled to Teen Vogue.

One of the first clips we saw from the "Barbie" movie was the now iconic shot of Barbie stepping out of her heels only to stay perched on her tip toes — after all, Barbie's heels never touch the ground. Fans were mesmerised by the shot. Even Chrissy Teigen tweeted, "I need to know everything about this shot. How many takes, if she held onto something, was she harnessed, is the landing mark sticky, are they her feet, who did the pedicure, really just a documentary on this shot."

Greta Gerwig confirmed that no computer-generated imagery was involved. "There was a big discussion in the beginning," Gerwig explained on "The Project." "Everyone said, 'Are you going to CGI all the feet?' And I thought, 'Oh, god! That's terrifying, no! That's a nightmare.'"

As Robbie admitted to Fandango, though, filming the scene wasn't exactly easy. "I walked up, we had little sticky bits on the floor, like, double-sided tape for the shoes so they wouldn't come off so I could get my feet out of them and I was holding onto, like, a barre, but that's it, it wasn't, like, a harness or anything like that," she said. Altogether, the shot only took around eight takes. 

When Margot Robbie was preparing to play Barbie, one of the key things she had to work on was figuring out how to portray a living doll. You may have noticed that Barbie doesn't seem to have a lot of complicated emotions or thoughts at the beginning of the movie, almost as though she were ... plastic? That's all thanks to Greta Gerwig, who recommended that Robbie listen to an episode of the "This American Life" podcast about a woman who has no introspection. "You know how you have a voice in your head all the time? This woman, she doesn't have that voice in her head," Robbie told Vogue.

Gerwig went into more detail in an interview with Rolling Stone. "Margot and I talked a lot about finding this place where it's not that she isn't smart, but that she doesn't, at the beginning, have an interior life," the director explained. "Finding that sort of transparency as an actor was the baseline of where Barbie started. And then the discomfort of feeling disconnected from the environment, from feeling something coming up inside of you that's not the same as everyone else."

You may have noticed that Margot Robbie looked flawless as Barbie — almost as though she really were made out of plastic. This was, of course, intentional. Robbie worked with a skincare and gut health specialist, Jasmina Vico, to get her skin looking as perfect as possible for the shoot. 

As Vico told Harper's Bazaar, Robbie's regime included lymphatic drainage, LED therapy, cold laser treatments, Vico Glow Laser treatments, pressure point massage, and a gut health program. "Margot was ... eating fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, and kefir, all kinds of bitter foods, and berries," Vico said, adding, "Margot is very disciplined,"

While Barbie might wake up like this, clearly, it's not so easy for human women. Vico put it best herself: "We always want a magic wand, but good skin is a journey. They're not living dolls — and nobody is. You've got to do the work!"

"Barbie" is all about the hair. "The key look for Barbie was this impossible amount of hair," Margot Robbie told Teen Vogue. "I cannot think of a movie that had more hair than the 'Barbie' movie, because everyone had wigs with 10 times the amount of hair a wig would normally have in it." Robbie's hair was, of course, the perfect shade of blonde and hit her mid-back. Her hair was often styled with big bows, sweeping bangs, and plenty of bouncy curls. 

Hair and makeup designer Ivana Primorac told Byrdie that Robbie actually had 18 different wigs along with 30 hair pieces over the course of the film. "I wanted it to be like the best hair day every day," she said. "No one was allowed not to have the best hair."

However, as the film goes on and Barbie becomes plagued by human thoughts and human problems, she also has to deal with human hair. You'll notice that her hair gets flatter and flatter. "It becomes less of Barbie volume, it becomes a human in volume," Primorac revealed.

Another important part of Margot Robbie's Barbie transformation? Learning not to laugh at her hilarious co-stars! "Every day was the best day ever — every day was hilarious," she recalled to Teen Vogue. "There was so many funny actors in this film." Robbie found it almost impossible not to laugh at Ryan Gosling, whom she labeled "comedically gifted." Kate McKinnon presented a challenge, too, as "nothing can prepare you for what is ever going to come out of her mouth," Robbie said. "Greta [Gerwig] herself is a brilliantly comedically gifted actor so the lines she would give you were always so funny," the actor added.

Robbie confessed that she had a hard time keeping a straight face during Gosling's Ken scenes. In fact, she explained, she ruined quite a few of his takes. "His barometer was to try and make me burst into laughter," Robbie said, "which he succeeded at almost every single day!"

By the end of Margot Robbie's transformation into Barbie, not only did she look more like a doll than a human, she also felt and thought like Barbie, too. And for those of you who have seen the movie, that doesn't just mean she felt happy and positive all the time — in fact, quite the opposite. In the film, Barbie was forced to grapple with some pretty big questions. "As funny and silly as this movie is, it's also very clever. ... I took a lot from it. I've never had so many conversations about the meaning of life as I have with Greta making this movie," Robbie told British Vogue.

Robbie later reflected to USA Today, "I didn't know this character was going to get down into my bones in this way. I just didn't ever expect to have so many big, profound conversations about the meaning of life or what true happiness is. I mean, we joke about an existential crisis, but it all did become very existential."

Ironically, transforming into a Barbie doll pushed Margot Robbie to feel more human than ever before.