Margot Robbie thinks we're already sick of her. History says she's right.

Margot Robbie just said what women think about every day.

Am I too much? 

Am I making it all about me? 

Will I ever shut up?

The executive producer and star of 2023's biggest movie Barbie is concerned. Robbie suspects she's been overexposed.

When asked during an interview with Deadline if she would take a break following awards season, Robbie revealed she plans to focus on her work behind the camera as a producer for her production company LuckyChap Entertainment.

"Everyone’s probably sick of the sight of me for now. I should probably disappear from screens for a while," she laughed.

"Honestly, if I did another movie too soon, people would say, 'Her again? We just did a whole summer with her. We’re over it.' I don’t know what I’ll do next, but I hope it’s a little while away."

Perhaps not surprisingly, the quote was met with shock online. One comment writer Zoë Rose Bryant shared on X (that's since gained more than 350,000 likes) said, "I have never once in my life been sick of looking at Margot Robbie."

The past year has been dominated by Robbie – more so than any year before. While she's been a popular face in Hollywood since her breakout role in The Wolf of Wall Street in 2013, before earning Oscar nominations in 2018 and 2020 for role in I,Tonya and Bombshell, the actor has never been one to attract constant headlines.

She's a star, no doubt, but she's one of many famous women that fans admired.

But 2023 was truly Margot's time to shine. From her Barbie-inspired red carpets to her relatable interview moments and, of course, the unprecedented success of Barbie, it was Margot's world – and we were just living in it.

Watch Margot Robbie's tour of the Barbie Dream House.

However, having been in the industry so long, Robbie knows a truth about showbiz that we've all seen play out time and time again. It's a phenomenon many Hollywood woman are all too aware of: that once they've scale the heights of success, you're primed to be knocked off your pedestal.

Look no further than Jennifer Lawrence, who was basically Margot's career doppelgänger 10 years prior.

Lawrence was catapulted to stardom thanks to her role as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games in 2012. The following year, she proved she was much more than a typical action star, earning the 'Best Actress' Academy Award for Silver Linings Playbook.

But it wasn't the Oscar that earned Lawrence the love of a generation; it was what happened when she accepted it. She tripped over. This simple accident as she climbed a flight of steps positioned her as everyone's loveable best friend.

Like Robbie, the actor reached a level of fame that few other stars reach. Her every fashion move was applauded, and her quips about loving pizza during interviews were peak 2010s meme material.

This was around the same time that Chrissie 'hard relate' Teigen was practically a demigod to the terminally online. 

But Lawrence's tenure as a parasocial bestie quickly took a turn for the worse. A few awkward interviews and rumours that she was rude to fans tilted the scales, which sank even further after a string of movie flops like Passengers and Mother!.

And there's nothing the masses relish in more than a once-successful woman suddenly failing. Taylor Swift wrote the book on it (or, the discography).

By the end of the 2010s, people had decided that Lawrence was a Pick Me Girl, the antithesis of feminism. The popular opinion? Her entire schtick was to be 'not like other girls' to gain the approval of men.

Jennifer Lawrence gives the finger at the 85th Annual Academy Awards. Image: Getty. 

Of course, a lot of this was just... nonsense.

The judgement was based more on people's projection than anything Lawrence said or did, but it was too late. The stories were written, the damage was done. 

The criticism had finally gotten to Lawrence.

2018 marked the actor's final leading role for several years, Lawrence stepping out of the spotlight for three years, until she made her return in 2021's Don't Look Up. 

"I just think everybody had gotten sick of me. I’d gotten sick of me. It had just gotten to a point where I couldn’t do anything right," she told Vanity Fair in 2021.

"If I walked a red carpet, it was, 'Why didn’t she run?' ... I think that I was people-pleasing for the majority of my life... I felt like I reached a point where people were not pleased just by my existence."

Another young actress who went from blockbuster film franchise to swift decline in public approval ratings? Kristen Stewart. Even before she was embroiled in a cheating scandal, she was often criticised for trivial things like not smiling enough, or acting awkward while promoting the Twilight saga.

"I used to be really frustrated that, because I didn't leap willingly into being at the centre of a certain amount of attention, that it seemed like I was an a**hole," she told Vanity Fair in 2019. 

"I am in no way rebellious. I am in no way contrarian. I just want people to like me."

Listen to The Spill discuss Margot Robbie's Hollywood exit.

And when it comes to Hollywood women whose sharp rise to fame was followed by a swift fall into 'unlikeable' territory, Anne Hathaway is a prime example.

From her early role in The Princess Diaries to solidifying her status as Hollywood's next big thing in The Devil Wears Prada, Hathaway had all the makings of the next Julia Roberts or Halle Berry. She proved her acting chops with her role in the screen adaption of Les Misérables, winning a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BAFTA Award, and Academy Award in 2013.

But there was something about her behaviour in press interviews and award speeches that irritated... well, basically everyone.

Anne Hathaway at the 85th Annual Academy Awards. Image: Getty. 

There was something too earnest, too saccharine, too 'overexcited theatre kid' about Hathaway.

She was branded 'too much' – a cardinal sin for women everywhere. 

After her Golden Globes win, Hathaway said, "Thank you for this lovely blunt object that I will forevermore use as a weapon against self-doubt" – a comment that was heavily mocked online.

In the course of one awards season, Hathaway went from Hollywood heavyweight to human cringe-magnet.

In the preceding years, Anne told Harper's Bazaar the criticism felt like being "punched in the gut" and she felt "shocked and slapped and embarrassed. Even now I can feel the shame."

And her dwindling popularity amongst the public had wider repercussions for her career. 

"I had directors say to me, 'I think you're great. You're perfect for this role, but I don't know how audiences will accept you because of all this stuff, this baggage,'" she added.

But no actress in recent times had a more dramatic fall from grace than Katherine Heigl. 

Back in the early '00s, there was no actress hotter than Heigl: she was on the biggest TV show on air Grey's Anatomy and the leading lady of seemingly every rom-com. 

However, her career would come crumbling down after a few rogue interviews where the 27 Dresses actor was deemed 'ungrateful' and exhibiting 'diva' behaviour, a scarlet letter for any young famous woman.

Most notoriously, in an interview with Vanity Fair, she spoke candidly about what she really thought of her 2007 comedy Knocked Up. "It paints the women as shrews, as humourless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys. It exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it on some days," she said. 

"Why is this how you're portraying women? Ninety-eight percent of the time, it was an amazing experience, but it was hard for me to love the movie."

In hindsight, it wasn't a reach to categorise a Judd Apatow film as sexist – but at the time, Heigl was so high on her pedestal, it was almost too easy to knock her off.

Katherine Heigl at the 59th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards. Image: Getty. 

"I may have said a couple of things you didn't like, but then that escalated to 'she's ungrateful,' then that escalated to 'she's difficult,' and that escalated to 'she's unprofessional,'" Heigl reflected to the Washington Post in 2021.

"At the time, I was just quickly told to shut the f**k up."

So Margot Robbie's quip that she'll steering clear of the spotlight, lest people get sick of her? It speaks to the star's likely awareness of just how quickly the tide of public opinion can turn for women in the public eye.

Of course, men don't face the same scrutiny. 

For instance, Bradley Cooper has managed to escape any real controversy around his role in Maestro, despite early criticism that the prosthetic nose he wears in the film is anti-Semitic. 

Then there's his relationship with supermodel Gigi Hadid, who is more than 10 years his junior, and follows a public divorce from Irina Shayk.

As for another awards season contender, Timothée Chalamet, his relationship with reality star Kylie Jenner could be seen as a ploy for publicity, and could perhaps accused of lowering the tone of the awards season. Lucky for him... he's a man.

Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner at the 81st Golden Globe Awards. Image: Getty. 

Men don't have to defend the people they partner with the way women do.

Of course, it's neither fair or true to discredit Jenner in this way, but just imagine the conversations if Emma Stone started to date a star of Vanderpump Rules. It makes no logical sense, but her reputation would suffer as a result.

Robbie's acting break could also prove to not only be good sense but good business. She follows a long line of women considered over-saturated in their height of fame who took a hiatus and came back swinging. 

Claire Danes was a '90s screen queen, starring in Little Women and Romeo and Juliet, but she took an extended acting break in 2008 before returning as a TV lead in 2011 series Homeland. 

Renee Zellweger was everywhere in the early '00s, but took a six-year hiatus before returning to win her second Academy Award for Judy in 2020.

Zellweger opened up on the reason for her acting hiatus in a Vanity Fair profile. "It was time to go away and grow up a bit," she said.

“I got sick of the sound of my own voice." 

Another woman who felt shamed for shining a little too brightly – that old chestnut. A man could never!

Feature image: Getty.