Margot Robbie has revealed that Quentin Tarantino requested that she didn’t wash her feet when on the Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood set.
The Australian-born actress shared the anecdote in a new video interview with Vogue, where she broke down some of the most famous looks she has sported throughout her acting career.
Discussing her fictionalised portrayal of ‘70s actress Sharon Tate in 2019’s Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood — which also starred Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Pacino — Tate shared insight into one of her most iconic scenes in the film.
The moment in question was the scene in which Robbie removes her shoes while in a movie theatre, and enjoys the film while resting her bare feet on the seat in front of her. The scene is one of apparently 36 shots of people’s feet in the film, according to the TopMotionClips YouTube channel, and soon became a talking point around the movie.
According to Robbie, while the plan for her to “kick off her go-go boots” and put her feet up was always in the script, the dirty appearance they had in the final shot was a spontaneous choice, after the director asked her not to wash them on the day.
“My character walks into a movie theatre to see herself on the big screen, and she kind of kicks off her go-go boots and puts her feet up and settles in to watch the movie,” she explained in the video. “But my feet were dirty because I’d been walking around set.”
She continued: “They stayed dirty in the movie because Quentin said, ‘Don’t. Don’t clean them,’. Someone ran in to do it, and he was like, ‘No, it’s real. Keep it.’”
The Pulp Fiction director previously addressed comments made about his “fetish” for women’s feet, and justified his decision to have them appear so frequently in his cinematography.
“There’s a lot of feet in a lot of good directors’ movies,” he said, adding that he doesn’t take the comments “seriously”.
“Like, before me, the person foot fetishism was defined by was Luis Buñuel, another film director,” he added. “And Hitchcock was accused of it and Sofia Coppola has been accused of it.”
In other Margot Robbie news, last month the actress admitted that she initially believed the upcoming Barbie movie — in which she appears in the lead role — would “never see the light of day”.
“The first time I read the Barbie script, my reaction was, ‘Ah! This is so good. What a shame it will never see the light of day because they are never going to let us make this movie.’ But they did.”
Set for release on July 21, the film is directed by Greta Gerwig and has been long-awaited by fans. It also stars Ryan Gosling, Helen Mirren, Michael Cera and Will Ferrell.