Kids’ fantasy yarn The Golden Compass is in cinemas this week, and to celebrate we have an interview with star Dakota Blue Richards. Click below to watch the trailer.

Is it true you had never acted before this? Had you always wanted to be an actress?

When I was little I used to pretend. I’d be a cat by tying a feather boa to the back of my trousers. From the time I was about six I wanted to do plays, and proper acting. Me and my friends would make up our own plays. The best one I did was called The Fall Of Danny. It’s about this guy Danny who falls in love with a woman and falls out of a window and gets buried alive, because the doctor thinks he’s dead…

How did you find out about the Golden Compass auditions?

My mum started reading His Dark Materials to me when I was about nine. And I saw the play at the National Theatre in London. I really liked the character of Lyra, and I really wanted to be Lyra. Then my mum’s friend was watching BBC’s Newsround and heard that a film was being made. She asked me if that was the book I was always talking about.

Were you a fan of the Philip Pullman books?

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… but in Lyra’s position I think it’s a very good idea to be good friends with the bears. You would feel very protected: don’t mess with me ‘cos I have a bear on my side. Iorek is the only being that Lyra lets be better than her: she accepts that he is bigger, stronger, braver and cleverer.

Were you nervous at the auditions?

My mum and my grandma and me went to the casting call in Cambridge. My mum said we wouldn’t go if the weather was bad, so it was lucky it wasn’t raining! We waited in the queue for about three hours, and we went into the audition in groups of between 50 and 100 girls. They asked your name, age and where you came from, then some of you got your picture taken and some were asked to read something. And I was asked to read a second piece. I don’t think many girls got to do that. I was called back with about 60 other girls to the casting office in London. Then I started to feel scared about it because 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!

How did you react when you found out you’d got the part?

I came home after a bad day at school and my mum said we had to wait for a phone call. It was Chris Weitz, the director, and he said, ‘Can you put me on the speaker phone?’ and so my mum hung up on him, because she’s not very good with technology, and didn’t know what to do. So he called back and told me, and I screamed and was very excited, and did the Snoopy dance! That’s very ‘spinny’ and ‘jumpy’ and ‘kicky’, a ‘leggy’ kind of dance…

How was it acting with the likes of Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig?

The first scene I did in the film was with Nicole Kidman. I didn’t have to say anything, thankfully. I was at a table surrounded by loads of other people that I didn’t know, and Nicole sat next to me, and I had to act like I knew her. Both she 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 make me feel more confident about myself and what I was doing. They taught me that whatever happens during a take, you should just carry on. Don’t ever stop until the director tells you to stop. The first time I met the director Chris Weitz at my screentest, he was a bit scary because he decided he was going to play the bear, and he stood on top of the sofa and roared ‘I am a bear’. And I was just like, okay, I’ve never met you before and you are really scary right now.

What’s the most difficult thing about being an actress?

I think the worst is when you have to do things over and over. That can become boring, although you have to try to make it slightly different, so it can still be fun. The other really difficult thing on The Golden Compass was the green screen. 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… I had to imagine a green bean bag was my daemon that I really love.

What was your favourite part of filming?

The scenes I enjoyed most – and this may sound strange – were the fight scenes! It was great because I was fighting the Tartar guards, and it was stuntmen who were playing them, and they said to me, ‘don’t worry, you just fight as hard as you can,’ and I did. They were padded and wearing heavy clothes, so I was able to wriggle and kick as hard as I could.

Were there any embarrassing moments?

The most embarrassing moment was falling over on the fake snow. There were lots of other kids running and some of them fell over as well. I fell over not once, not twice, but three times!

Is acting something you plan to do when you grow up?

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.

Do you have any more movie roles lined up?

I’m starting another film, The Moon Princess, in Hungary in August 2007 with Colin Firth. The director of the film is Gabor Csupo, and it is adapted from a book by Elizabeth Gouge. I hope we will make the second book of His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife, so that I can be Lyra again.

In The Golden Compass, Lyra has a daemon called Pan. What daemon would you have?

Lyra’s daemon, Pan, is mostly a cat or a ferret. He’s also a mouse some of the time. In the third book he settles as a pine marten. But he doesn’t keep changing all the time. It depends what mood Lyra is in, and how she’s feeling. If she’s in a fight with someone then Pan might become a scarier animal. I’d like to have a daemon. I think when it settled it would be a ring-tail lemur. I’ve thought about that for a while. Either a ring-tail lemur or a white hare.

Posted by Thin White Duke

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 2:58 pm and is filed under National, News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.