Any nominees?
Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors is one off the top of my head that I can come up with.
Whose your nomination?
Is it harder for an American to do British or for British to do American?
That performance came to mind as soon as I saw the thread title. I hadn’t heard of Gwyneth Paltrow at the time and was surprised to learn some months later that she is American.
And of course there is Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
Even better- Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones Diary.
Just who do you think you’re whooshin’ with that shit? :dubious:
IANAB, but I want to nominate Forest Whitaker in The Crying Game. Something of a bit part, but excellently done.
I think Alexis Denisof and James Marsters in Buffy/Angel did their respective accents pretty well.
I have to agree with you, it wasn’t perfect but it was one of the best.
I thougt the best, deliberately bad accents were the ones of the ‘Wee Britain’ residents in ‘Arrested Development’, Charlize Theron in particular.
I was very surprised to learn that James Doohan (Scotty on Star Trek) was not a native Scot, but actually from Canada.
The other way around, I was amazed when I first heard Bob Hoskins interviewed (having only ever seen him in Who Framed Roger Rabbit).
What’s the opinion of Hugh Laurie’s attempt at an “American” accent in “House, MD”?
I’ve read that the producers didn’t realise he wasn’t American when he auditioned for the part, but that smacks of promotional fluff to me.
I was surprised to learn he was British! Very good, then, imo. 
I’ve always thought so too. Alexis lived in London for 3 years studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, so one assumes he had plenty of time to hone his accent.
Tony Head’s accent is just as fake, incidently. James says in real life Tony sounds like Spike, and he even patterned Spike’s accent from listening to Tony.
Juliet Landau, however, belongs in the Dick VanDyke school of accents. “Spoike! Spoike!” 
For a hint of Tony Head’s natural accent, watch the season three episode “Band Candy.” As he reverts to his Ripper persona, he starts speaking a little rougher and less posh.
It’s terrifically sexy.
He’s superb. In the season finale, he did a very short bit imitating an unidentifiable, lower-class English accent, and that sounded fake!
I can believe the story. I knew Laurie from Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster, but his accent in House has me saying, “I know this guy is British, isn’t he?”
Gwyneth Paltrow, again. Amazing, because she got a regional accent down, too, and the intonation was perfect.
Renee Zelweger did a very good job, but there are a few vowel sounds that she just couldn’t get right. The short ‘o’ if I recall.
I tutored an American actress girlfriend to do an English accent, and she was very convincing, but the short ‘o’ let her down too.
IMO: Gwyneth (I too didn’t realise she wasn’t a Brit in Sliding Doors), but not Renee, who sounded like she was trying too hard to remember how to pronounce everything.
Where does Gillian Anderson fit in here? She was born in the states, lived in England until she was 11, moved to Michigan, lost her accent, and moved back to Britain (I think) after The X-Files. I thought her accent was very good in Bleak House but I’m no expert.
Denisof and Marsters again for me.
A lot of it is vocabulary more than anything else though. Being able to do a passable accent is only the start of it - if you don’t use words correctly, use americanisms or use archaic terminology then that flags you up as a fraud quicker than anything else.
I’ve done extensive research on this.* One of the things i quickly discovered on these barbarian shores is that you can pretty much guarantee that being British and sitting on your own in a bar over here is like wearing a large sign saying:
Surprisingly it often is pretty damn good. They’d never get mistaken for a native though because the vocabulary is all wrong.
So basically there’s a difference between sounding British and actually, well, sounding British if you catch my drift
<gratiutous celeb shoulder rubbing>
That’s exactly what he told me and a mate a few years back when we had drinks with him on a couple of occasions. It was him that first mentioned the vocabulary thing to me actually.
He said that a lot of what he got from Tony Head was learning the right things to say as much as helping him refine how he sounded.
</gcsr>
Purely for scientific purposes you understand. I’m happily engaged man*
**just in case. she may be reading this…
In interview over here she talks with a perfect, natural English accent. However, I recall her saying that when she’s in the US, it mutates to American.
When I first saw House, it nagged at me for days that I knew this guy from somewhere, but I just couldn’t place it. A few days later, my wife was watching a rerun of the Friends episode in which Laurie appears. It wasn’t until then that I put the face and the voice together.
"Ah-ha!, I yelled. “Blackadder! The Young Ones!”
Yeah, that got me some strange looks from my wife.
To sum up – yes, his American accent is flawless.