Saoirse and the Dakotas

When someone in Hollywood needs a 15 year old blonde with dramatic chops to headline or co-star in their movie, I imagine that Saoirse Ronan and Dakota Fanning are getting the scripts first. Can we get a few mailed to Dakota Blue Richards, too?

Dakota Blue Richards in Five Miles Out (2009)

She's exactly 1 day older than Saoirse Ronan (weird trivia!) but I fear she may get lost in the shuffle. Fanning has two months on both of the Dakotas and many more years of experience and celebrity. But Saoirse already has an Oscar nomination and a primo gig with Peter Jackson. Richards, on the other hand, is only known for headlining The Golden Compass, the blockbuster that didn't bust blocks. Since Compass she's made 1 TV film, 1 short and 1 feature.

<-- Saoirse and Dakota the First

In that stack of shorts I saw whilst in Nashville, Richards had the lead in a beautifully shot miniature called Five Miles Out. She played a morose and preoccupied girl, trying to shake off the heavy weight of a family crisis during a trip to the seaside. That 18 minutes was enough to remind me that she holds the screen really well. You look at her face and you must know what's going on inside her head. It's the same feeling I get when I watch someone like Samantha Morton... albeit on a much smaller scale in this case.

Did you think Richards was strong in The Golden Compass? Any other mid-teen actresses you think are worth watching? It won't be long before they're all fighting it out for what we now think of as the Keira Knightley, Amanda Seyfried, Scarlet Johannson parts.
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