Dakota Blue Richards is an English actress. Her film debut at the age of 13 was in The Golden Compass, as the lead character Lyra Belacqua. Other lead roles include the wayward teenager April in Dustbin Baby and Maria in the 2009 film The Secret of Moonacre. In 2011 she played Franky Fitzgerald in the third generation cast of British teen drama Skins. She has also played roles in television, film and on stage.

The Golden Compass is a 2007 fantasy adventure film written and directed by Chris Weitz that is based on the 1995 novel Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, the first installment in Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, which was published as The Golden Compass in the United States. It stars Nicole Kidman as Marisa Coulter, Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra Belacqua, and Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel, alongside Sam Elliott, Ian McKellen, and Eva Green. In the film, Lyra joins a tribe of seafarers on a trip to the far North in search of children kidnapped by the Gobblers, a group supported by the universe's rulers, the Magisterium.