Patriarchy has never been an issue for Margot Robbie and husband Tom Ackerley, who are expecting their first child together.

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’s now pregnant with her and Ackerley’s first child together.

“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.

“And then it happened,” Robbie continued, “and I was like, ‘Of course we’re together. This makes so much sense, the way nothing has ever made sense before.’”

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.

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The 34-year-old Australian and her English husband of six 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.

They first met in 2013 when Ackerley served as third assistant director on the WWII-era romance Suite Française and Robbie had a supporting role. She bonded with him and several other ADs, and when she rolled back through London to do press for Wolf of Wall Street early the next year, they all decided to get a place together.

It was while sharing a three-bedroom house in Clapham with five roommates, including future business partners Kerr (Robbie’s mate since childhood) and McNamara (second AD on Suite Française), that Ackerley and Robbie’s friendship quickly blossomed into more.