Margot Robbie says male co-star gave her book telling her to ‘eat less’

Margot Robbie has said that she was once given a weight-loss book by a male co-star, revealing she told him: “F*** you, dide!”

The Australian actor, 35, is currently promoting her new movie Wuthering Heights, an adaptation of the classic Emily Brontë novel in which she stars opposite Jacob Elordi.

In an interview with Charli XCX, who recorded the soundtrack for the film, Robbie recalled the experience with an unnamed former co-star.

“Very, very early in my career, an actor I worked with, a male actor, gave me a book called French Women Don't Get Fat,” recalled Robbie, “and it was essentially a book telling you to eat less.”

The book in question, French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano, was first published in 2006, and became a best-seller. Guiliano wrote that the book is “specifically” aimed at “women who need to lose up to thirty pounds”.

Reflecting on the incident, Robbie stated: “[The actor] essentially gave me a book to let me know that I should lose weight. I was like, ‘Wow’.”

Charli then asked her collaborator whether the co-star in question was “still acting”.

Robbie responded: “That was a very long [time ago]. I have no idea where he would even be now. Really back in the day.”

The Barbie and Wolf of Wall Street star has spoken out against the sexism she has experienced on film sets before, including in her capacity as a producer on recent films.

Speaking to Glamour UK in 2020, Robbie said that sexist attitudes were “naturally ingrained” in people on set.

“Even if you are the one who should be dictating the decisions, they turn to the closest, eldest male in the room and direct the question at them,” she said. “It’s just an inherent thing everyone has got in their DNA.”

Wuthering Heights has received largely negative reviews from critics, with The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey awarding it one star.

“Our modern literacy crisis has found a new figurehead in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights,” she wrote. “It’s Emily Brontë’s 1847 classic for a culture that’s denigrated literature to the point where it’s no longer intended to expand the mind but to distract it.”