Fuck Yeah Dakota Blue Richards: Dakota Blue Richards joins "The Fold"

fuckyeahdakotabluerichards:

Fresh from her success in Skins, Dakota Blue Richards (represented by ARG) is currently shooting British indie feature The Fold in Bristol and Cornwall, playing Eloise, the daughter of an Anglican priest.

What happens when your instinct to protect leads you into mortal danger?

Dakota Blue Richards: “When I come home I don’t want to be an actor, I want to be a kid”

fuckyeahdakotabluerichards:

“I was quite lucky last year, because I didn’t really have to do anything too explicit. There weren’t too many drugs — and no sex. Whereas this year there’s a lot more. A lot,” Skins actress Dakota Blue Richards says frankly.

The sixth series ends tonight and 18-year-old Richards has been playing the character of Franky Fitzgerald — an androgynous, super-intelligent wild-child who has a cult following on Twitter. Her storyline has been one of the most controversial tackled by the show: full of guilt that she may have caused the death of her best friend Grace, she falls into a damaging relationship with a young drug dealer. As the plot unravelled over the series, it was like watching a car crash in slow motion.

“The issues are very powerful and dark, yet real. I hope the message it sends out is that no matter what happens, if you stay in control of yourself, and look to the people who are looking out for your best interests, rather than the people trying to manipulate you, you can get through anything,” she tells me.

It could be a metaphor for Richards herself. In fact, the Skins writers based several of Franky’s personality traits on Richards, who is extremely bright and self-possessed. Which is hardly surprising considering that at only 12, she was cast as Lyra Belacqua in Hollywood blockbuster The Golden Compass, the film of the first novel of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, alongside Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.

Ten thousand girls turned up for the open auditions but Richards won the approval of Pullman himself, who declared: “As soon as I saw Dakota’s screen test, I realised that the search was over.”

“She had to handle the strain of acting and, when not acting, going to school. She had the hardest job,” Chris Weitz, the film’s director, says, explaining that they cast her because she was so level-headed. This describes Richards well. Despite her showbusiness name (her mother called her after the native North American tribe, having studied in the States, and Blue was her father’s nickname), she had not planned to be an actor. But she was a huge fan of Pullman’s books and had seen the West End play. When she found out about auditions for The Golden Compass from a family friend, who saw an item on Newsround, her mother agreed to take her on the condition that it wasn’t raining and she wouldn’t be too upset if she wasn’t chosen.

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