Accents in movies

How about all the American tv series that have non-Americans doing American accents? True Blood: Vampire Bill Compton is English and Jason Stackhouse is Australian (and Sookie Stackhouse is either a New Zealander or Canadian, depending on which reporter she's talking to). Gregory House was English. The Wire: Jimmy McNulty—English, Stringer Bell—English, Tommy Carcetti—Irish (and now on Game of Thrones with the obligatory English accent, as Littlefinger). Hawaii Five-0: Steve McGarrett—Australian...And that's just off the top of my head. I KNOW there are lots of American actors looking for work—I live in LA and I go to restaurants! Overall, it seems to me that American actors aren't as good at accents as people brought up with much more exposure to other accents than we generally have, but still...

And, speaking of accents and Game of Thrones (which I briefly did...), there we do have an American, Tyrion Lannister, doing one of the WORST English accents I've heard since Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins—but Westeros, apparently like Ancient Rome, is a fantasy, so they can sound like whatever they want...

As to Sylvester Stallone and dialog...no. Thank you. No. Not ever.

 

The best by far, is Sean Connery.

He sounds exactly the same in every movie he has ever done. He does the absolute worst Japanese accent to the point where it is unintelligible when he is speaking in Japanese in the Rising Sun. He has the same accent when he is a Russian submarine captain in the hunt for red october, the same accent playing the King of England in robin hood and one other movie, another Englishman in a dracula movie, an Irish cop in the untouchables, or my favourite The Highlander. In a tale of great Scottish warriors, Sean Connery, a Scot, plays a Spanish nobleman while a Belgian plays the real Scot! I mean, really?!

As for Italians, my favourite movie that has to do with Italy is Roman Holiday and the Italian accents in the film, actually all of them, sound very well done. I am pretty sure they filmed quite a bit of it in Italy itself too.

 

Und vie is ziss ah proablem...

 

Another example of actors portraying a non native accent was in the Dresden Files. Dresden was a British actor
playing an American, and his advisor/sidekick was an American using a British accent.

 

It's certainly patchy.

No-one can do an Australian accent properly - whether American actors or British actors do it, they're laughably unconvincing.

I think my all time favourite accent was Tom Cruise's Oirish accent in Far and Away, which is genuinely hilarious.

Russell Crowe's Robin Hood, who at various times in the film appears to be from the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Southern England, the English Midlands, Northern England, America, Australia and possibly even the Netherlands, is pretty special too.

And then there are the occasional good ones. I'd never seen Damian Lewis before Homeland, and I was shocked when I first saw him interviewed and discovered he was English. Saoirse Ronan seems to be able to do pretty much any accent perfectly too.

It's funny that this should come up today. I spent all day yesterday on a flight from Sydney to Shanghai. I finally got round to watching the first two Bourne films. At one point, Brian Cox (CIA senior person Ward Abbott) says "I did this for my country!" What? Scotland? While working for the CIA? Why? He can't shake the Scottish accent at all.

 

YES—Damian Lewis is another of them furrin guys stealin' jobs from our waiters!

 

We go there, we take your jobs, we take your women...

 

How about Johnny Depp playing a Native American?

Icarus

 

do not know that that last item is an issue for a large portion the LA population in question...

But seriuosly...how friggin' hard can it have been to find American actors to play a Bawlmer homicide police, a ghetto drug dealer who takes business school classes, and a shady American politician for The Wire...? F'rinstance...

And Johnny Depp had no business being Sweeny Todd either, but I am rather fond of Jack Sparrow.

 

Ah, yes, sorry. We go there, we take your jobs, we take your women and we take your men.

Speaking as a British person, I think the issue is that we're better-looking and infinitely cooler than Americans. I'm sorry. We just can't help it.

I did, however, watch the first 30 minutes of Bachelorette on yesterday's flight, before turning it off and looking at clouds out of the window. While Rebel Wilson and Isla Fisher pull off passable American accents, I would still have had no complaints if visa restrictions had prevented this film from ever being made. Also, if Serbian or French visa restrictions had prevented Guy Pierce, Vincent Regan or Joe Gilgun from working, and thus prevented Lockout from being made (again, I got 20 minutes in before turning it off), the world would be a better place.

 

Guy Pearce gets a permanent pass from me for having been in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert—which the Americans should have left alone, along with Truly, Madly, Deeply. Alan Rickman as a GOOD guy!

Note, please, I am ignoring the looks/coolness issue since I don't want to get booted into FHoPol!

 

Alan Rickman can play any part he wants, and I don't care what accent he uses...

 

Renee Zellweger sounded 100% English in Bridget Jones. I didn't realise she was Amercian at first; she never slips up as anything other than English accent wise. Either she's lived here a while or she's a cracking actor.

 

Many American actors can do an English accent nicely as I quoted above with Renee Zellweger and then Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady was also 100% spot on.

I think you're doing your actors a dis-service suggesting that they aren't as good at actors from elsewhere. Not everyone can do accents. Maybe it is to do with exposure (or lack of) to other places and cultures? Things have to be changed for the American market and thus you (the collective you) don't realise what is out there. For example, in the Harry Potter book the US edition changed the word mum to mom. Why? It's a story about an English kid, so why not leave the English spelling so your kids realise that out in that big wide world, other English speaking peoples have different words for the same things. Expand their knowledge and horizons a little. That way, maybe they'd be more open minded to others ways of doing things? On the subject of Harry Potter. Just watched the movie this afternoon and the old English steam train doesn't whistle like English steam trains do but instead it is an American lower toned hooter like on a ship. Why? I'm guessing so that American viewers don't have to question and have familiarity?

But is it this changing things to the familiar that actually takes away the character and cultural references of other places and thus might explain your original complaint?

 

Ooooohhhhhh....do NOT get me started about the Scholastic 'translations' of the Potter books. I mean, let's start (or not...) with The friggin' SORCERER'S Stone, hmmm? I HATE the American versions. I bought my copies of the books from Amazon UK, so it is NOT my fault, and I have no rational explanation why it was thought necessary. The thought that American kids are too stupid to figure out from context that going on 'holiday' means 'vacation' and need things dumbed down for them is offensive to me. Plus, the illustrations suck. AND I can't contribute to Rowling's fortune by buying the Kindle version, because my IP addy tells Pottermore where I am and will only sell me those stupid Scholastic abominations and not allow me to choose to have them in the original English. Ditto if I want recorded versions. I am ghettoized by virtue of my electronic footprint to the land of Jim Dale instead of Stephen Fry.

See? I told you not to get me started. And yes, the bloody typical American insularity is EXACTLY what I meant!

 

Yes, Zellweger and Streep are exceptional. EXCEPTional. It is not as unusual for the run-of-the-mill British (or whatever other English-speaker other than American) actor to be able to play a different accent. But American actors have, historically, had a different approach to work altogether. In the UK, it isn't unusual for actors, no matter their 'level,' to bop back and forth between film/tv/theatre—work is just work, with no relative status-related connotations. Americans have been less likely to 'go back' to tv after doing movies, and the theatre is just a whole other category. That seems to be changing a bit here, but I suspect a lot of it has to do with inflated Hollywood salaries...