Dakota Blue Richards
Born: April 11 1994
Where: Brighton, UK
The young actress beat off the challenge from 10,000 other hopefuls for the role of Lyra in the big screen version of The Golden Compass.
Chris Weitz, director of the first instalment of the Philip Pullman series His Dark Materials, picked her during auditions held in Cambridge.
"I don't want to go from filming to filming to filming. If I did that, I wouldn't see my friends."
The daughter of an American anthropologist and a drugs counsellor (who split up just after she was born), she caught the acting bug after appearing in local amateur dramatics.
When she was 12 she attended the casting sessions for The Golden Compass and was picked to star alongside Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman.
