Althouse: "It’s undeniable that non-American actors are a lot more comfortable with American accents than their predecessors were a generation or two ago."

June 24, 2015

"It’s undeniable that non-American actors are a lot more comfortable with American accents than their predecessors were a generation or two ago."

"Listen, for example, to Laurence Olivier—who was a gifted mimic—struggling to sound like a Midwestern businessman in The Betsy (1978)... For Olivier’s generation, the function of an English actor in an American movie was generally to lend a touch of class to studio costume dramas... Lord Larry and his contemporaries and their immediate successors were, for the most part, perfectly content to sound like the Englishmen they were, except when, as was frequently the case, they were playing Nazis. They just didn’t get much practice talking American. That’s all changed. The Brits have now become so good at imitating Americans that there’s hardly an American role you can’t imagine them in...."

From "The Decline of the American Actor/Why the under-40 generation of leading men in the U.S. is struggling—and what to do about it."

In that clip, Lord Larry is bellyaching about Congress interfering with capitalism. I like the way he lays heavily into the word "cope" at 7:38, "cope" being a key word on the blog yesterday. Yesterday was all about coping, hoping, and poping.

79 comments:

rhhardin said...: I resent british-accent films without the ability to turn on subtitles.

Why bother to even have dialogue if nobody can understand it?; 6/24/15, 11:40 AM
CJinPA said...: I think the UN enacted a resolution that all U.S. presidents be played by British actors. It's quite a list.; 6/24/15, 11:42 AM
Wilbur said...: The decline of the under-40 American actor has been weighing heavy on my mind lately. So glad to see someone addressing this.; 6/24/15, 11:43 AM
Anonymous said...: The Brits have now become so good at imitating Americans that there’s hardly an American role you can’t imagine them in...."

Many Brit actors are classically trained in programs that teach accents. To work in UK film/Theater you need to be able to do half a dozen dialects. adding generic American to the isnt that much extra.

- Upper Class English
- Working Class English (e.g. Midlands)
- Irish
- Scots
- Working Class London
- Liverpool/Ulster; 6/24/15, 11:44 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: Last night's rerun of The Big Bang Theory was the one where Penny is despondent that her acting ambitions are going nowhere, so she quits her waitressing job so she can take acting classes full time.

Not at all funny to me, I just kind of assumed that it's a show business in-joke that successful actors find hilarious.; 6/24/15, 11:48 AM
David said...: Clearly, we need a National Strategic Under 40 American Actor Reserve, which will increase the price of the under 40 American actor by having the government seize 10% of them and give them to foreign governments, exporters, and NGOs.; 6/24/15, 11:52 AM
campy said...: I like the accent Shropshire-born Paul Blackthorne affects in the comic-book TV series Arrow. He sounds like he stepped out of an Edward G. Robinson movie.; 6/24/15, 11:54 AM
Meade said...: I wonder if calling myself Lord Larry would help me cope with all the disrespect I get around here.; 6/24/15, 11:55 AM
Skeptical Voter said...: Hey I worry (as should our host) about the struggles and difficulties of under 40 year old lawyers.; 6/24/15, 11:55 AM
Meade said...: Lawd Larr-ah.; 6/24/15, 11:56 AM
Dave said...: Of course that's Robert Duvall saying"cope', not Olivier, but it's nevertheless true that Olivier wasn't particularly great with an American accent.; 6/24/15, 11:57 AM
Jaq said...: I resent british-accent films without the ability to turn on subtitles.

I was in France one time watching a French Canadian movie and it was dubbed.; 6/24/15, 12:00 PM
Sydney said...: I remember reading that trying to talk American all the time gave Hugh Laurie a headache when he was on House.; 6/24/15, 12:02 PM
Scott said...: Yeah, I was really surprised to learn that Hugh Laurie was British. He does a generic American accent very well.

John Barrowman is a British actor who got his American accent legitimately, growing up in this country.

Dubs: I watched an episode of Benny Hill dubbed in German with Thai subtitles once.; 6/24/15, 12:13 PM
damikesc said...: Because most movies are pretty terrible? And few things make Boomers happy than remembering their childhood and everybody knows that what you liked when you were young is, clearly, the greatest thing in history.; 6/24/15, 12:13 PM
Nathan said...: This once proud nation's recent failure to produce an actor worthy of playing Spider-Man should raise a blush in the cheek of every American. Where is the bold politician who will propose a National Defense Education Act for the arts?; 6/24/15, 12:14 PM
Brando said...: Considering that Hollywood exists today just to pump out licensable garbage to sell toys and please the Chinese markets, isn't this a bit like complaining about the food while the Titanic is sinking?

If the British are better, good for them--they get the roles. If Americans want those roles, compete better. But eventually it'll just be a question of what the Chinese want to see in subtitles anyway.; 6/24/15, 12:18 PM
azbadger said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/24/15, 12:30 PM
Yancey Ward said...: They are good today- I usually can't detect the fake accent anymore, even when I know it is an affect.; 6/24/15, 12:30 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: It is sometimes surprising. My partner was a fan of House, which portrayed a drug addled brilliant physician. He was played by a Britt of some type, and we didn't realize it, despite having seen him in many dozens of episodes, until we saw him on a late night comedy/talk show talking in his native accent.; 6/24/15, 12:30 PM
azbadger said...: Matthew Rhys (The Americans) and Idris Elba (The Wire) are good examples of two actors you would never guess aren't American.; 6/24/15, 12:31 PM
Etienne said...: Q: Do you know why Brits say Herb and Americans say erb?
A: Because it has a fucking 'H' in it.; 6/24/15, 12:32 PM
William said...: They say English is the easiest language for a foreigner to learn. It's a blue collar language. It didn't develop as the language of the court, of the academy, of the clergy. It was used simply to communicate, and it's rules aren't arcane. In like way, the American accent is the easiest one for foreigners to imitate. It is flat, broad, and level. If you add up all the accents in the world and divide by a million, you get something that sounds American.........The Duke of Wellington was sent to Eton because his mother felt that he was in danger of developing an Irish accent. The whole point of those boarding schools was to give the English ruling class their own accent......English actors, even those from a working class background like Cary Grant, used to feign an upper class accent. That's changed. I think most of them, even those from a posh background, imitate a gritty working class accent.; 6/24/15, 12:32 PM
damikesc said...: It is sometimes surprising. My partner was a fan of House, which portrayed a drug addled brilliant physician. He was played by a Britt of some type, and we didn't realize it, despite having seen him in many dozens of episodes, until we saw him on a late night comedy/talk show talking in his native accent.

Hearing him talk in his normal accent is baffling. Ditto, for me, hearing Jax from Sons of Anarchy doing the same.; 6/24/15, 12:40 PM
Beorn said...: My favorite American accent by a Brit is Leslie Howard in Gone With the Wind.; 6/24/15, 12:42 PM
Etienne said...: William said...They say English is the easiest language for a foreigner to learn. It's a blue collar language.

Exactly right. Try learning Spanish or French as an adult. It's almost impossible even if you have a 1000 word vocabulary.

My mother knew no English in 1944, and by 1945 she was conversational, and by 1952 she became naturalized.

But the term isn't "blue collar language," it is called a "mongrel language." That is, it takes from all languages, and the dictionaries aren't approved by a government department.

Although, if you go to France with your high school French, you will understand no one, and they will look at you like you just got off a sailing ship with four masts, and oars for the darkies.; 6/24/15, 12:52 PM
Julie C said...: I read somewhere that Leslie Howard was not really happy having to do the part, and so rather petulantly refused to do a southern accent.

The actor that surprised me was Andrew Lincoln on The Walking Dead. And I saw him all dressed up in fancy 18th century period costume on some Masterpiece theater type of BBC drama. Cracked me up.

The actor who played Jax on Sons of Anarchy always seemed to me to be straining a bit with his accent at least in the first two seasons of the show. Maybe doing a central Californian low life accent is tougher than a southern accent. But heck, he was so good looking that he could have been speaking Hungarian ...; 6/24/15, 12:58 PM
Anonymous said...: Coupe said...
Although, if you go to France with your high school French, you will understand no one, and they will look at you like you just got off a sailing ship with four masts, and oars for the darkies.

And be insulted by your attempt to speak French. I think it's a romance language thing. The Spanish can also be insulted that way.

The Germanic language types, including the Scandi's hear your broken whatever, are pleased and drop into English, which they speak well.

All except the Dutch. Though Dutch is not far from German, you'll get some ugly stares if you try your German out on a Dutch shopkeeper of a certain age. German's are the only approved group that the Dutch love to hate...

Ironic, because the Dutch and Germans are so closely related in so many ways culturally....; 6/24/15, 1:01 PM
MayBee said...: The thing I love is how the movie actors in the 30's-50's had British accents.. Even the American ones. So did American newscasters. That whole upper crust British sounding American accent went away in 1 generation.; 6/24/15, 1:21 PM
Shane said...: Am I missing something? At 7:38, that is not Olivier, its Robert Duvall.; 6/24/15, 1:26 PM
richard mcenroe said...: Kenneth Branagh's American accent in 'Dead Again' wandered 1500 miles in the course of one sentence.; 6/24/15, 1:41 PM
rhhardin said...: If a Canadian orders in French in France, the waiter brings them an English menu.; 6/24/15, 1:49 PM
richard mcenroe said...: You folks don't understand the gravity of the problem. If we don't don't keep American actors employed in Hollywood, the assholes will come back home.; 6/24/15, 1:51 PM
Valentine Smith said...: Re the under 40's: They're all in pretransitioning mode to become grand dames. Too bad all the Davis and Crawford roles are beyond their range. Must be all the estrogen in the water supply. Or the Ethiopians in the fuel supply. Speaking of which, there are no more William Claude Dukenfields either.; 6/24/15, 1:52 PM
The Godfather said...: I'm not sure when the Brits started doing a good job talking American. I do remember seeing Peter Ustinov doing accents on Johnny Carson. His "American" was a little bit of a parody of an American accent, which gave you the sense that this was the way Americans sound to the Brits, rather than the way we sound to each other.

But it's certainly true that British actors are amazingly good today at sounding American. I suspect that the much, much larger size of the American audience, compared to the British, has a lot to do with it.

When did American actors lose their British accents? It wasn't just Cary Grant, who really was a Brit (although from a working class background); it seems to me that every American actor playing an American upper-class character in the '30's and '40's had a phoney British accent.; 6/24/15, 1:54 PM
Quaestor said...: The "decline of the American actor" is an old story, and Hollywood is entirely to blame. Since the heyday of Rudolf Valentino Hollywood has been addicted to charisma, as opposed to competence in the craft. Before Valentino American stage actors enjoyed their share of success on both sides of the Atlantic, Edwin Booth (brother of the assassin) was one of the most respected Shakespeareans of his day. William Gillette invented much of the popular image of Sherlock Holmes (the hat, the pipe, the mannerisms, the "elementary, my dear Watson" catchphrase, while performing on the London stage. Nobody thought Gillette wasn't a convincing Englishman.

When Selznick was casting "Gone with the Wind" he discovered there weren't many American actors of stature who could manage a realistic antebellum Southern aristocratic accent, thus we have Leslie Howard, Vivian Leigh, and Olivia de Havilland -- British all -- in three of the four pivotal roles. Clark Gable was foisted on Selznick by an uproarious public that demanded him in the role of Rhett Butler. Gable knew he was in the catbird's seat vis à vis Selznick, and didn't even modify his standard and completely inappropriate clipped mid-western accent, much to the diminution of the whole film.

The problem with American actors is that with a few exceptions they can't act. Take for example the HBO series "Band of Brothers," you'd never know it by listen to their accents, but many of the key roles are filled by British actors. Somebody who's really impressive in that series is Rick Warden as Lt. Harry Welsh. He plays Welsh as convincingly American as any American could. Compare that performance with his role in Kevin Branagh's "Shackleton" in which he plays a Glaswegian stoker aboard the doomed Endurance.; 6/24/15, 2:04 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Of course that's Robert Duvall saying"cope', not Olivier, but it's nevertheless true that Olivier wasn't particularly great with an American accent."

I can't see a damn thing in that scene. It's so dark and fuzzy. Is Olivier not even at the table? That all Duvall... with that phony baloney accent?; 6/24/15, 2:09 PM
Paco Wové said...: "And be insulted by your attempt to speak French."

YMMV. I've been there several times, and while I've been met with blank stares of incomprehension at my atrocious pronunciation, I've never had a Frenchman get snooty because I tried parler le Français.; 6/24/15, 2:23 PM
kcom said...: Half the cast of "The Walking Dead" has a British accent. They should rename "Talking Dead," the aftershow, to "Talking British". Even American Lauren Cohan (Maggie) has some form of British accent from growing up there.; 6/24/15, 2:25 PM
Joe said...: The alleged decline of the American actor is a relative decline, but having worked in the industry, I suspect several big factors are:

1) Many American actors are unwilling to go through the grind. How many "stars" have that long list of small and guest parts.

2) Related, due to the smaller pool in foreign countries, actors there have to do a wide variety of work to make a living.

3) Distance. Through the 70s, most TV and movies were shot in Los Angeles and New York (Hawaii Five-0 being an extreme outlier.) Now, shows and movies are shot all over the place. For one example, a poor, beginning, actor can't afford to jump between shows being shot in LA and Vancouver (and the production company isn't going to pay the airfare for someone with two lines.); 6/24/15, 2:36 PM
Anonymous said...: Damian Lewis as the quintessential American soldier (Dick Winters) in "Band of Brothers".

As noted above, I'm agog when I hear Hugh Laurie in his native accent.; 6/24/15, 2:47 PM
William said...: Leslie Howard played Henry Hill in the movie version of Pygmalion. He taught Liza how to speak properly. He himself was the son of a Hungarian immigrant. That's kind of meta when you consider that Liza is accused of using such proper English that she must be a Hungarian Princess.; 6/24/15, 3:29 PM
glam1931 said...: Henry Higgins. Henry Hill was the gangster in GOODFELLAS.; 6/24/15, 3:34 PM
Anonymous said...: Q: Do you know why Brits say Herb and Americans say erb?
A: Because it has a fucking 'H' in it.

Compare and contrast:

Honey
Honour; 6/24/15, 3:36 PM
furious_a said...: Dubs: I watched an episode of Benny Hill dubbed in German with Thai subtitles once.

I once watched a Muppets Show dubbed in Hungarian. Followed by the Burt Reynolds movie Fuzz also dubbed in Hungarian.

Apparently America is no longer producing regular-guy action-hero movie stars. We have to import Aussies (Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Sam Worthington, Sullivan Stapleton) or Brits (most of The Walking Dead cast and Damian Lewis, as noted, Idris Elba and Dominic West on The Wire, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Liam Hemsworth, Charlie Hunnam).

The Americans (and I'm counting Mel Gibson and Arnold Schwarzenegger) are all Geriatrics stuck making Die Hard and Expendables sequels.; 6/24/15, 3:40 PM
Paco Wové said...: "Henry Hill was the gangster in GOODFELLAS."

That must be why Liza ordered that hit on him in Just You Wait.; 6/24/15, 3:42 PM
furious_a said...: Oh, and Jack Bauer is a Canuck who was born in London.; 6/24/15, 3:44 PM
glam1931 said...: That English-sounding (to modern audiences) accent that American actors seemed to affect so much in old movies is generally referred to as "Mid-Atlantic"; it's really a descendant of what used to be called "standard stage speech", as taught in traditional acting schools, and was popular both for its aristocratic tones and clarity for motion picture recording. It fell out of favor after WWII.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpv_IkO_ZBU; 6/24/15, 3:49 PM
Lydia said...: The Brits do best with a southern American accent. Olivier's once wife Vivien Leigh in Streetcar Named Desire is a good example. When they try "normal" American, they go way too flat. Hugh Laurie in House certainly did, plus he usually spat out the words.; 6/24/15, 3:50 PM
furious_a said...: ...this once proud nation's recent failure to produce an actor worthy of playing Spider-Man...

...or Batman, Superman, Kick Ass, or, for that matter, John Connor!; 6/24/15, 4:04 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/24/15, 4:13 PM
Mitch H. said...: It’s always a pleasure to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt, even in big dumb pictures like Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, and Looper

Dude, if your idea of a big dumb picture are those three, I think you've managed to confuse "genre" for "stupid". I mean, The Dark Knight Rises has a lot of problems, but being dumb isn't one of them, and both Looper and Inception are puzzle-box stories, Inception notoriously so.

Matthew Rhys (The Americans) and Idris Elba (The Wire) are good examples of two actors you would never guess aren't American.

Not if you've seen Elba in Luther, his working-class accent is pretty thick. And that's another thing, Elba gets roles, but he's over forty, as is Matthew Rhys. Rhys, like Alexis Denisof, is paired on-screen with a female actor *barely* under forty. But when the author discusses Amy Acker's Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, he says nothing about the (I swear on a stack of bibles, he's from Maryland) American Denisof's clever, heroic, delicately buffoonish Benedict.; 6/24/15, 4:21 PM
AReasonableMan said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/24/15, 4:46 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: I was surprised to learn that Robert Taylor played Longmire. It is likely that Australians are good at American accents, at least in part, because so much of their local TV and film schedules are filled with US shows. They grow up hearing the American accent in addition to their own. This would be less true in Britain, which has more home-grown entertainment. In Italy everything is overdubbed, badly, so the actors are never exposed to American accents.; 6/24/15, 4:49 PM
The Godfather said...: @Althouse: I had the same problem viewing the clip (dark and murky) on my phone. When I was able to get to my laptop I could see that Duvall was the cope-er. Not too much else.

I don't think I've ever seen that movie, but I think it was based on a novel that I did read. Harold Robbins, right?; 6/24/15, 5:03 PM
kcom said...: The lead actor in the series "The Glades" played a Chicago detective transplanted to Florida. He's an Australian, too. I wonder how he came about his American accent and if he was going for Chicago or not.; 6/24/15, 5:06 PM
Dave said...: Re: Mid-Atlantic accent
My mother was raised in small town North Dakota and Montana in the ‘20s and ‘30s. Her aspirational parents sent her off to Stephen’s College in Missouri in 1940. It was a finishing school for proper Midwestern young ladies, styling itself in some ways after the Seven Sisters. One of the required courses was elocution. The desired accent was Mid-Atlantic. The faculty despaired over my mother’s inability (well, really unwillingness) to drop her hard Rs. “Mu-thahh ahnd Fah-thahh” remained “Muh-thur and Fah-thur” and she continued to “warsh” her hands for years. The grande dame of the school was an elderly Maude Adams, who debuted Peter Pan on Broadway at the turn of the century. And there we see the influence of “standard stage speech” that Archie Waugh mentioned.; 6/24/15, 5:10 PM
Jaq said...: I spent a year in Australia. I tried to learn their accent by listening to and copying the radio. The female announcers had much more pronounced accents so it was easier to pick up sounds. Finally I couldn't hear the difference anymore so I tried out my accent on the locals. The locals appraisal?

"That's pretty good Tim, except you sound like a poofster!"

That's when I realized that learning foreign accents is pretty subtle and complicated.; 6/24/15, 5:14 PM
richard mcenroe said...: Go to Spain and speak Mexican Spanish, on the grounds more people speak it. Then look at them funny.; 6/24/15, 5:41 PM
Left Bank of the Charles said...: Tobey Maguire turns 40 in 3 days, but his omission from The Atlantic article must be regarded as a fail.

Also, can one really exclude Canadians from the category of American Actors? Canada has been included in the "domestic" box office since time immemorial. They are North Americans.; 6/24/15, 5:42 PM
Swifty Quick said...: Brits do a good job with American accents. But the inappropriate facial expressions accompanying the words coming out of their mouths is the giveaway. They don't have that part down. Especially with Hugh Laurie, but he's not the only one.; 6/24/15, 5:51 PM
kcom said...: "Mu-thahh ahnd Fah-thahh” remained “Muh-thur and Fah-thur"

One thing I really liked about Shakira's song "Whenever, Wherever" was how she really, really pushed the r sound on the word "near". I assume that was for artistic effect but there are a lot of places in the world where that sound doesn't exist. I'm not sure about Colombia. I'm also not sure about her exact English fluency at that point either. That was her first hit song in English and I'd read somewhere awhile back that she sang it phonetically but when I looked just now I didn't see anything that confirmed that.; 6/24/15, 6:00 PM
Roughcoat said...: Very few actors, Americans or otherwise, and no Brit, can do a Chicago accent. Instead, in tough guy-type roles, they do a New York blue collar accent, which is really ridiculous (to Chicagoans). The Blues Brothers had pure Chicago accents and that's because Akroyd and Belushi were Second City veterans (and Belushi was from the Chicago area). Even today Akroyd, who is Canadian by birth, speaks with a modified Chicago accent (he really took to it). Bill Murray and William Peterson, both Chicagoland natives, have Chicago accents; also the SNL "Super Fans," played by Second City vets. Kurt Russell tried for one in "Backdraft" and did a reasonably good job, but Robert DiNiro spoke "New York" and came across (to this Chicagoan) as ridiculous. The Chicago accent in its purest blue collar white ethnic form is basically a modified Irish accent, more precisely, a modified County Mayo accent, County Mayo being where the majority of Chicago Irish came from in the waves of 19th century immigration. I've been to County Mayo many times and I will attest that you can plainly hear the roots of Chicago-ese in the Mayo accent and habits of speech.; 6/24/15, 6:02 PM
Michael K said...: "Kenneth Branagh's American accent in 'Dead Again' wandered 1500 miles in the course of one sentence."

That is one of my favorite movies and Branagh got the Los Angeles accent of the 1960s exactly correct. He also did a good job with the other character's which was sort of a German who learned English accent. I saw the film in a theater the first time and was a half hour into it before I realized he was playing both parts.; 6/24/15, 6:19 PM
Anthony said...: IIRC the American upper crust "British" accent was supposed to be distinctly non-Brit but enough like it to distinguish one's self from the rabble.; 6/24/15, 7:00 PM
joeknows said...: There were 26 Brits playing American soldiers in Band of Brothers and they were very good at it. Being that it was filmed in the UK may have had something to do with it, but I am guessing that the producers opted for quality and went with the best actors available.

http://www.listal.com/list/band-of-brother-brits; 6/24/15, 7:01 PM
Jeff Gee said...: 25 years ago, you could listen hard and hear who the Brits studied to get their accents. Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs sounds like he’s channeling James Woods. Kenneth Branagh in Dead Again must have had Richard Lewis tapes playing in his car for a month. Now, half a dozen dead-on American accents seem to be part of every British actor’s basic tool kit.

But that’s not why they’re getting all those plum parts. Americans actors tend to have pretty good American accents, too.

I am guessing that the producers opted for quality and went with the best actors available.

That’s my guess, too. And you also want the best actor who won’t require 15 takes to nail the scene.; 6/24/15, 7:12 PM
Jaq said...: Classic VT accent; 6/24/15, 7:38 PM
holdfast said...: Australian Sam Worthington couldn't fake a decent American accent even if held at gunpoint by a terminator.

Speaking of the "r" sound - I love how Aussies put an "r" at the end of words where it isn't - i.e. pronoucning "Canada" "Canadar".

I really liked Ben Kingsley's double-fake A'murcan accent when he was playing the Mandarin in Iron Man III.

Because I had only seen Don Cheadle in Hotel Rawanda and Oceans 11, I actually thought he was a Brit at first.; 6/24/15, 7:39 PM
holdfast said...: Holy crap did Iron Man III have a lot of Brits (and Paltrow, a kinda Brit)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1300854/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_9; 6/24/15, 7:43 PM
Quaestor said...: There were 26 Brits playing American soldiers in Band of Brothers

Thanks for that link. There were more Brits than even I imagined. Many USA infantry divisions in WWII were based on peacetime National Guard units under the provisions of the National Guard Mobilization Act of 1933. Consequently they tended to be staffed with soldier recruited from a single state. As the divisions were brought up to strength and later replenished in the field by replacements, the all-local-boys character of these line divisions were inevitably diluted. The 101 Airborne Division, however, was assembled from the start from volunteer soldiers recruited from every state and territory of the Union, which is one reason why Stephen Ambrose chose to write his book about one company within that division.

To accurately portray the soldiers of Easy Company the actors had to be able to handle a variety of regional American accents with aplomb. The one actor who really fooled me was Ross McCall (Pvt. Joe Liebgott) a Glaswegian who never for a moment failed to convince me he wasn't born in California.; 6/24/15, 8:02 PM
Quaestor said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/24/15, 8:02 PM
Joe said...: To me, the most bizarre accent was that of George Plimpton.

I thought Hugh Laurie's accent in House was excellent. I think critics don't quite understand the huge variance of accents in the Northeast (which is much larger than the variations of the Southern and Western accents, though probably not as large as the accents of Great Britain. Hell the accents of London alone can make your head spin.); 6/24/15, 8:36 PM
Sydney said...: If you really want to hear bad American accents, watch Hugh Laurie's Wooster and Jeeves series that he did with Stephen Fry. There was one season when Bertie Wooster was in New York and all the actors playing Americans were Brits. It hurt my ears to listen to them.; 6/24/15, 8:47 PM
Anonymous said...: Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire of "Longmire" is played by an Australian, craggy western lawman accent and all. He was also one of the backup agents in "The Matrix."; 6/24/15, 10:44 PM
Kirk Parker said...: Meade,

"Lawd Larr-ah. "

That's you!

I once had a professor named Silva (of Cuban origin.)

He did a visiting professorship in England, and quickly learned not to introduce himself as "Dr. Sil-vah" (which his listeners mentally spelled "Dr. Silver") but instead as "Dr. Sil-ver" (which they mentally spelled as "Dr. Silva".); 6/25/15, 4:56 AM
Paco Wové said...: "If you really want to hear bad American accents..."

Yes, if you go back to English television of the 70's and 80's, atrocious imitations of American accents abound. It's as though the only models they had to work with were Northeastern Gangster and Southern Plantation Owner. Sometimes you'd get both in the same character.; 6/25/15, 6:54 AM
Known Unknown said...: Speaking of the "r" sound - I love how Aussies put an "r" at the end of words where it isn't - i.e. pronoucning "Canada" "Canadar".

That's also evident in Southern England and Eastern Massachusetts. A lot of "idears"; 6/25/15, 8:55 AM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: English actors such as Tom Hardy, Christian Bale, and Gary Oldman are so much better at sounding American than any Americans are at sounding British. The antipodeans are also very good, not just Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, but also South Africans Charlize Theron and Sharlto Copely. I think Black Hawk Down may have started the trend of British and Commonwealth actors playing Americans well enough to fool us, and in large numbers. Still, one of these days Robert Duvall is gonna nail that American accent!; 6/25/15, 9:37 PM