Margot Robbie Reveals She ‘Wasn’t Actually That Much of a Barbie Girl as a Kid’ (Exclusive)

Margot Robbie hasn’t always been a Barbie Girl, in a Barbie World.

Just ahead of the release of the highly-anticipated Barbie movie, hitting theaters July 21, the film’s star opens up to PEOPLE in this week’s issue, revealing that as a kid, the world’s favorite doll wasn’t her go-to toy.

“I didn’t personally have any that I can recall,” says Robbie, 33, when asked if she remembers playing with Barbies growing up in Queensland, Australia. “My sister did and I remember my cousin did. I would play with my cousin’s, but I wasn’t actually that much of a Barbie girl as a kid.”

Then what kind of girl was she? “I was more of a roll-around-in-the-mud kind of gal,” she explains. When she did play with dolls, the Barbies she opted for were “all weird,” she says. “I think they were all so janky because they were not well cared for. They were all weird Barbies.”

Even still, the film has been a passion project for Robbie, who is also a producer on the project. Bringing the world of Barbie to the big screen by way of a somewhat surreal PG-13 comedy has been a bold undertaking, and one that Robbie is honestly surprised worked out.

“I’ll never forget, after talking to [writer-director] Greta Gerwig for years I sat down and read the script, There was a joke on page one and I was like ‘They’re never going to let us make this movie’,” she says of Barbie parent company Mattel. “But they did!”

The whole experience has given Robbie a deeper respect for the beloved doll, and what she stands for. Asked what inspired her most about the project, the star says, “The idea that I am enough. Barbie can be anything and everything, but even if you’re just making it through life, you’re crushing it. I found that very therapeutic.”