Dreamchild is a 1985 British drama film written by Dennis Potter, directed by Gavin Millar, and produced by Rick McCallum and Kenith Trodd. The film, starring Coral Browne, Ian Holm, Peter Gallagher, Nicola Cowper and Amelia Shankley, is a fictionalised account of Alice Liddell, the child who inspired Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

The story is told from the point of view of an elderly Alice (now the widowed Mrs. Hargreaves) as she travels to the United States from England to receive an honorary degree from Columbia University celebrating the centenary of Carroll's birth. It shares common themes with Potter's television play Alice (1965). The film evolves from the factual to the hallucinatory as Alice revisits her memories of the Reverend Charles Dodgson (Holm), in Victorian-era Oxford to her immediate present in Depression-era New York. Accompanied by a shy young orphan named Lucy (Cowper), old Alice must make her way through the modern world of tabloid journalism and commercial exploitation while attempting to come to peace with her conflicted childhood with the Oxford don.

The film begins on the ship bearing elderly widow Alice Hargreaves, who as Alice Liddell was Lewis Carroll's muse and the inspiration for his book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and her carer Lucy. As they disembark, they are set upon by several journalists, all trying to get a story or quote from Alice about her relationship with Carroll, whom she knew as "Mr. Dodgson". Clearly bewildered by all the excitement, she is befriended by an ex-reporter, Jack Dolan, who helps her and Lucy through the legions of the press. Dolan quickly becomes her agent and finds endorsement opportunities for her. Throughout it all, a romance develops between Jack and Lucy.

When left alone in their hotel room, Alice hallucinates that Mr. Dodgson (Ian Holm) is in their room, as well as the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, The Caterpillar, the Dormouse, the Mock Turtle, and the Gryphon. When she joins them for their tea party, they make fun of her for being so old and forgetful. She remembers also the lazy boating party of 4 July 1862, when Dodgson, then a mathematics professor at her father's college, had attempted to entertain her and her sisters by spinning the nonsense tale that grew to be Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Via flashbacks, it is insinuated that Dodgson was infatuated with Alice, and that their relationship may have had sexual overtones. She recalls the boating party through this new perspective; she realizes that Dodgson was jealous when she met the boy whom she would one day marry, and that she enjoyed toying with his affections, deliberately baiting him to provoke his nervous stutter. Alice tries to understand her feelings and past relationship with Dodgson in her mind.

By the time she delivers her acceptance speech at Columbia University, she comes to terms with Dodgson and the way they treated each other. In another fantasy sequence with the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, she and Dodgson forgive each other and make peace.

Dennis Potter had previously adapted the story for television in 1965 for the BBC's The Wednesday Play anthology series, under the title Alice. Potter expanded the story and added to his script, basing Dreamchild on a real incident where Alice went to New York to collect an honorary degree. He decided to do it as a feature, but after unhappy experiences writing Pennies from Heaven and Gorky Park he did it through his own company and also worked as executive producer. He used the producer and director of his successful TV production, Cream in My Coffee.

The film was part of a slate of movies greenlit by Verity Lambert at EMI Films. Others included Slayground, Morons from Outer Space, and Comfort and Joy. There was no US money in the film but Universal had first right of refusal to distribute.