Margot Robbie thought about quitting Hollywood after Wolf Of Wall Street

The trials and tribulations of fame have caused many a star to wonder: How can I go on? Funny how most of them seem to go on anyway. But that doesn’t negate how invasive and cruel fame can be, as Margot Robbie learned after starring in Martin Scorsese’s Wolf Of Wall Street at just 22 years old. The blonde bombshell role catapulted her to stardom so intense that she considered hitting the brakes on her career entirely.

Navigating instant fame after Wolf Of Wall Street was one of Robbie’s “lowest moments,” according to a new profile in Vanity Fair. “Something was happening in those early stages and it was all pretty awful, and I remember saying to my mom, ‘I don’t think I want to do this,’” she recalls. “And she just looked at me, completely straight-faced, and was like, ‘Darling, I think it’s too late not to.’ That’s when I realized the only way was forward.”

Among the actor’s classic frustrations are fake tabloid news (“You want to correct it, but you just can’t. You have to, I don’t know, look the other way”) and press junkets. “They only want sound bites and I don’t resent them for it, I get it—they’ve got three minutes,” she shares. “But it’s like tap dancing through a minefield because you’re so tired and you’ve done it for hours and hours, and to keep on guard all the time…. You can say it right a thousand times, but you say it wrong once, you’re fucked.”

Robbie herself has become accustomed to an A-lister’s life: “I know how to go through airports, and now I know who’s trying to fuck me over in what ways.” What bothers her, understandably, is when her family gets caught in the crossfire. “If my mom dies in a car accident because you wanted a photo of me going in the grocery shop, or you knock my nephew off a bike—for what? For a photo? It’s dangerous but still weirdly nothing feels like it changes.”

Put that way, one does wonder why anyone would sign up for stardom. “The way I try to explain this job—and this world—to people is that the highs are really high, and the lows are really, really low,” Robbie tells the outlet. “And I guess if you’re lucky, it all balances out in the middle.”