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Interview: Dakota Blue Richards

Nowadays celebrity does not start with talent, it does not start with charisma and it does not start with looks. Celebrity starts with a name. It could be Posh Spice, Britney or even Andre 3000. Whatever, a good name is key. In the world of kiddy celebrity the ‘It’ name would seem to be Dakota. Everyone knows perky pre-teen Dakota Fanning. Now her English contemporary, Dakota Blue Richards is making waves.
With only one movie to her name, this 13 year old can hardly rival the multi-movie repertoire of her American counter-part. Yet. Dakota Richards is the star of The Golden Compass, the adaptation of Philip Pullman’s best-selling novel, Northern Lights. In the movie she plays Lyra, a child brought up in Oxford who embarks on an extraordinary journey to rescue her kidnapped friend Roger and along the way finds herself caught up in a heavenly battle. Of course the whole thing’s a little more complicated than that. But you should really read it yourself. It is after all one of the children’s classics of our generation. A bit like Harry Potter, but darker.Dakota Blue Richards herself raves about the book. Although most of her interview sounds like a string of primped and preened sound-bites, her enthusiasm for Pullman’s novel is clear. It is, after all, the reason she auditioned for the role of Lyra. Having read the books and seen the stage-adaptation at the National Theatre, she was already a keen fan of ‘His Dark Materials’ when she learnt of the auditions, although she admits ‘When I first read the books I was quite young and I didn’t really understand a lot of it. I didn’t get “dust” and why the bears talked. It took me a while to understand it…’ Her reasons for auditioning, however, were simple. As Dakota puts it, ‘I really liked the character of Lyra, and I really wanted to be Lyra.’ Fulfilling a fantasy and getting paid. Who wouldn’t want to be a child star?Of course it wasn’t easy to get the part. Dakota had to beat 10,000 other hopeful girls at the auditions for which she travelled from her native Brighton to Cambridge. Her mother, apparently not the pushy showbiz type, told her she couldn’t go if it rained. Knowing the English weather, the odds really were stacked against her. But the rain held off. So Dakota schlepped to Cambridge with an entourage of mother and grandmother to stand in a three-hour-long queue. For some girls all they got at the end of this was a head-shot, but Dakota was called back. This must have been an intimidating experience for a 12 year old who had no experience of acting, but she claims she took it all in her stride, at least at first. ‘At the first auditions I didn’t think I was going to get it so there was no point in feeling nervous. But being called back was like, being given a real chance, and you know it’s time to start worrying!’But she needn’t have worried. Coming home from a bad day at school a few weeks later she received a call from the director, Chris Weitz. Laughing, she describes how her mother accidentally hung up on him when asked to put him on speaker phone. It’s all very good natured of her. If my mother had hung up on the man who was about to give me every little girl’s dream job, I would probably have brained her. Then again, it’s easy to laugh in retrospect. Those were probably a very tense few minutes in the Richards household. Of course like a true PR pro, Dakota brushes over this, moving quickly on to a description of her reaction. ‘I screamed and was very excited, and did the Snoopy dance! That’s very spinny and jumpy and kicky – a leggy kind of dance…’ She’s certainly got the ‘I’m cute and a little kooky’ thing down pat. If she keeps this up she’ll go far.Of course, The Golden Compass is a fantastic opportunity for any first-time actor. Playing Lyra, Dakota got to act alongside such heavy-weight actors as Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. If this was an intimidating experience for a twelve-year-old, Dakota’s not letting it show. She oozes self-assurance as she describes how working with the stars helped her. ‘Both she [Kidman] and Daniel Craig do this thing when they are acting which might be just to help me, but they seem so confident that I feel I should be, too. They made me feel more confident about myself and what I was doing.’Nothing juicy is to be had from Dakota, although she does admit that she was initially scared of the director, Chris Weitz. Then again, this is hardly surprising since the first time she met him he was standing on top of a sofa roaring ‘I am a bear’. There really is nothing like leading by example. But since then there have been no directorial temper tantrums. Dakota can only enthuse ‘I’ve found that he’s a very relaxed person and that makes everybody else relaxed. He never shouted at anybody ever, he’s just a really nice person and makes you feel good about yourself.’Far harder than working with temperamental personalities for this pint-sized star was learning to work with CGI. In the film Lyra lives in a different world in which everybody has a daemon, an animal manifestation of the soul. These are, of course, all digital creations. ‘A lot of the time I had to act to nothing, or to a green sack, or a green dot or a man in a green lycra suit,’ Dakota explains. ‘I had to imagine a green bean bag was my daemon that I really love.’ Although filming is finished, life is hardly back to normal for this little girl. ‘His Dark Materials’ is a trilogy, so Dakota will be back for two more films, unless the relatively poor American box office performance leads to a premature cancellation of the series. She spent the summer in Hungary filming The Moon Princess with Colin Firth. Something that would have most of our generation salivating Dakota takes calmly in her stride. In fact, she remains remarkably down to earth. When asked if she’d like to be an actress she replies, ‘I don’t know that I’d want to do acting as a job, not as a proper job. I’d like to do it as a hobby. I want to be a supply teacher. I’d like to be one of those teachers that kids really like.’ Small dreams, perhaps, but she’s not throwing in the towel just yet. It remains to be seen how this little girl’s star will rise.by Sarah Kent 

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