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

As the sixth series of Skins comes to an end, Dakota Blue Richards, who plays Franky, a wild child dealing with very adult issues, talks about still living with Mum
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Liz Hoggard27 March 2012

"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.

Richards attributes her success at the audition to her mother’s suggestion of not brushing her hair that day so that she would look “wild” like Lyra. Promoting the $180 million movie in 2007, she appeared on Ellen, attended Cannes, went to Japan twice. “I was a little girl from Sussex who hadn’t acted before, who had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t really realise how big the film was.”

Richards’s family lived in west London till she was three, when they moved to Sussex. She was at an ordinary school in Brighton but now attends a tutorial college that lets her build lessons around filming commitments. She still exchanges Christmas cards with Pullman — “he’s a lovely man” — though is notably cool when I ask her about Craig and Kidman.

“I understand that sometimes when you’re young it’s difficult to remember the difference between real life and what is part of fantasy. And I think my friends and my family are real. And the job, even the behind-the-scenes part of the job, is very much part of the fantasy. I think you need to be able to distinguish between the two in order for it to be healthy,” she says.

Her real enthusiasm is for French actress Eva Green, who played Serafina Pekkala, the flying witch queen, in the film. “She’s someone I look up to. I think she’s one of the most beautiful women in the world, but she’s just so calm and collected and kind. And yet humble, and I think those are such endearing qualities, and yet at the same time she’s so talented.

“At the red carpet events, she’d pose for pictures and look such a movie star and then she’d turn round and … [Richards mimes sticking out her tongue]. I just loved it. It was like: completely be in that moment and be that person they want from you, and yet know at the same time that it’s all just silly.”

After The Golden Compass Richards had roles in The Secret of Moonacre (2008) — “I just wanted to be a princess” — and the BBC film Dustbin Baby, with Juliet Stevenson, based on the Jacqueline Wilson novel.

But then everything went quiet until she got the role in Skins. With its frank depiction of teen sex and drug-taking, it was quite a change for the little girl who made her co-stars pay into a swear box on the set of The Golden Compass (Craig ended up owing her hundreds of pounds) — but the teen screen queen shows no sign of longing for the golden glamour of Hollywood. Her film career is on hold while she finishes her A-levels and she prefers the normality of family life.

Although her parents are now separated, she still lives with her mother, Ruby, a charity manager, in Sussex. “My mother is brilliant, she’s the best person in the world and keeps me grounded,” she says. Everyone assumed that she would study drama at college, but she chose A-levels in psychology, the philosophy of religion and ethics, and US and comparative government and politics. She has strong views, particularly on the subject of the scrutiny faced by young women in the media.

“But I think the press can never be as cruel as people my own age. Whatever they say, I’ve probably heard it before and it must have been said to pretty much every girl my age. I would be more insulted if they said something about my personality rather than my weight or my outfit. At the end of the day, those are things you can change. And if you think about the sort of people writing those things, I’m sure they’re not the most attractive people in the world,” she says. “It really doesn’t matter so long as I’m comfortable with what I look like.”

Her first sex scene was in Skins and her mother was consulted closely about the controversial scripts — though Richards has banned her grandmother from watching the series.

She jokes that her real life is a lot less rock ’n’ roll than that of Skins. “I think I matured quite early, but what that does mean is I have moments of complete immaturity. When I come home I don’t want to be an actor. I just want to be a kid. I barely even know what money is. I’m just like: ‘Mum, I’m going out, can I have some money so I can get some food?’”

Skins series six finishes tonight at 10pm on E4

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