Margot Robbie's Mary Queen of Scots transformation took over three hours a day

Cape Town - Margot Robbie had to undergo a rigorous make-over each day including several different wigs and prosthetic scarring on her face - when filming Mary Queen of Scots.

In an interview with Harper's Bazaar Robbie chronicled the process: "They'd start with a head wrap. Gelling and pinning my hair down. Then we'd do a bald cap."

She went on to say that there were different wigs for the stage of her story and her illness (smallpox) and prosthetic scarring was applied to her face. The quickest part of the process was applying the white makeup and her the drawn-on blush, eyebrows and lips.

Robbie stars alongside Saoirse Ronan in the historical drama based on John Guy's biography Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart.

Ronan is the eponymous character and Robbie her distant cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. The film chronicles the 1569 conflict between their two countries.

The film releases in SA cinemas on Friday, 18 January 2019.

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