Inside Margot Robbie and Tom Ackerley's Dreamy Love Story

Margot Robbie Gives Birth, Welcomes First Baby With Husband Tom Ackerley

Barbie and Ken's power dynamic remains a work in progress. As for Margot Robbie and Tom Ackerley's partnership...

Well, that's the stuff dreams are made of.

"I am so lucky," Robbie told E! News at the 2024 Critics Choice Awards in January, where Barbie would go on to be named Best Comedy. "He likes being behind the camera. He's not fazed by any of this stuff."

Which likely was key to eventually winning the heart of the self-described "ultimate single gal," who welcomed a son with Ackerley a few months ago.

"The idea of relationships made me want to vomit," Robbie told Vogue in 2016 about her bygone bachelorette days. "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.'"

Nor did she push Ackerley around or take him for granted.

Not enough can be said about the importance of being on the same page—sometimes literally, in their case.

Having decided in 2018 that Hollywood's long-gestating Barbie movie was the perfect project for LuckyChap Entertainment, the production company Robbie and Ackerley co-founded with friends Josey McNamara and Sophia Kerr, Robbie enlisted Greta Gerwig to write the script.

The 34-year-old Australian and her English husband of now eight years read the screenplay by Gerwig and her longtime partner (since turned husband) Noah Baumbach at the same time and were similarly gobsmacked by page one.

"We just looked at each other, pure panic on our faces," Robbie told Vogue ahead of Barbie's July 21, 2023, release. "We were like, Holy f--king s--t. I think the first thing I said to Tom was, This is so genius. It is such a shame that we're never going to be able to make this movie."

Long story short and $1.4 billion at the worldwide box office later, there was much to celebrate in the Robbie-Ackerley household (including a Best Picture nomination for both of them as producers, if not the expected Best Actress nod for Robbie or Best Director for Gerwig).

And the devoted pair are never short of friends to call should they want to throw an impromptu party.

And then, the newlyweds were kicked out of the fold.

"It was our roommates who told us, 'You guys had a wedding. You have to live on your own now,'" Robbie told The Guardian. "It honestly hadn't occurred to us. We were, like, 'Hmm? What? Just the two of us? That's gonna be weird.' And the first time we were in a house, the two of us, it was weird. Nice. But we missed having heaps of people around."

Sure enough, when she spoke to Vogue in the summer of 2019, the Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood actress divulged that her older brother, as well as a cousin and her husband, were living with them. 

"It's a common theme, isn't it?" Robbie noted. "I hate—hate—being alone."

Close quarters don't bother her, either. After Barbie wrapped in 2022, she and Ackerley took the British Pullman from London and then overnighted on the Orient Express from Paris to Venice. Then, on a trip to Japan, they rode the seven-car Seven Stars across the island of Kyushu.

"All I want to do," Robbie explained to Vogue, "is live on a train."

Eating also factors heavily into their travels (they waited in line for three and a half hours to sample udon carbonara in Tokyo), but she steers clear of the kitchen at home. Or at least of the appliances that make the food.

"In our friendship group in L.A. and London, all the guys cook, and love cooking, and are really good at it," Robbie said. "And none of the girls cook, and we love drinking, and we're really good at it."

Besides, communication is key when you're making blockbusters like Barbie together.

Robbie has shared that she and Ackerley had long conversations with Mattel execs as the protectors of the doll's complicated image combed through Gerwig's script line by line.

"We spent time at Mattel headquarters," she told the New York Times, "we went into their factories, we watched them make a doll and we talked to people who make them. They knew we were coming from a place of respecting the brand."

But while Ackerley was a hands-on producer, he was happy for Robbie to be the public face of Barbie (seemingly an obvious choice, but still).

"I think this'll be the [marketing campaign] they do dissertations on," Ackerley told The Upcoming at the film's London premiere, hanging out with fellow producer David Heyman while Robbie was belle of the ball. And he allowed that his wife and Ryan Gosling made for a "great combination" as Barbie and Ken.