Margot Robbie surprised everyone when she quietly married her then-longtime boyfriend Tom Ackerley in a secret ceremony in Australia in 2016. Although the “Babylon” actor never announced an engagement, he confirmed the news of their wedding by sharing a photo of her with her diamond ring on Instagram. While the two have been together for a while (since 2014, to be precise), their relationship has never been talked about much, let alone who Ackerley is, apart from the fact that he is the husband of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
Over the years, Robbie and Ackerley have rarely been photographed at industry events and lead more private lives, only occasionally mentioning their romance in interviews. However, some people might still be wondering who exactly Robbie’s husband is. Read on to find out everything we know about him, including why his wife once dubbed him “the best looking man in London”.
He is also in the entertainment industry
Corresponding persons, Ackerley got his start in film by working as an extra in the first three Harry Potter films, which Robbie once boasted about on The Graham Norton Show. “My husband is in the Harry Potter films. I know, I was like, ‘If you had told me sooner, we’d be married real quick,'” she joked.
After his brief stint on screen, Ackerley studied film at Godalming College in the UK and later worked his way up from set production assistant to assistant director British Film Institute. His films include 2017’s Beauty and the Beast and Assassin’s Creed.
He met his wife through work
Robbie and Ackerley met in 2013 on the set of World War II drama Suite Francaise, on which Ackerley served as third assistant director. Fashion reported. In an interview with the outlet in 2016, Robbie called her husband – who hails from Surrey, England – “the best looking man in London” as she recalled their relationship status when they first met.
“I was the ultimate single girl,” she said. “The idea of relationships made me want to throw up. And then this came to my mind. We’ve been friends for so long. I was always in love with him but I was like, ‘Oh, he would never love me back. Don’t make it weird, Margot. Don’t be stupid and tell him you like him.” And then it happened and I was like, ‘Of course we’re dating. This makes as much sense as nothing has made sense before.’”
He and his wife own a production company together
Corresponding Fashion, the pair run a production company together called LuckyChap. They started out with two of their friends, Ackerley’s sidekick Josey McNamara and Robbie’s childhood best friend Sophia Kerr. Some of her company’s projects range from 2017’s I, Tonya – which Ackerley produced – to the upcoming live-action film Barbie.
He helps Robbie overcome her self-doubt
In a 2021 interview with daily mirror, Robbie admitted that despite all her success, she still gets nervous when filming new projects. “I have this complete crisis of faith and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I’m not even good at acting and I can’t do this,'” she told the outlet. However, she said it helps her to lean on Ackerley for support. “Every time I do a film, I turn to my husband and I’m like, ‘I don’t think I can do this,'” she recalled. “He’s like, ‘You do this every time. You’ll be fine.'”
He’s afraid of snakes
Robbie poked fun at Ackerley’s ophidiophobia during a June 2021 appearance on “The Late Late Show With James Corden,” where she recalled the time the two encountered a snake in their backyard in LA. “My husband hates snakes,” Robbie shared. “He is English. They obviously don’t have them in England at all I think. But I mean they are everywhere! I live in LA and there was a six foot line right outside the kitchen, just the other day in the garden. [Tom] almost had a heart attack. He said, ‘What are we going to do?! Do we kill it?!’ And I was like, ‘F*ck. . . No, we don’t kill it. Just tell him to go somewhere else.'”
— Additional reporting by Njera Perkins