Brad Pitt’s pikey accent in Snatch was fabulous.
Keanu Reeves’ accents are pitiful, period.
OK I am reading alot of Buffy/Angel references dealing with British accents. What about Glenn Quinn’s american accent for several years while doing Roseanne?
As for Meryl Streep, I agree that she may go over the top sometimes, but she does it in the pursuit of excellence. Actually I just love it when she pulls out a good accent.
Her Irish accent in “Mary Reilly” has been mentioned; I missed that one. However, it couldn’t have been any worse than the one she used in “Michael Collins”. Aside from the accent, she generally appeared to be wandering about in a fog.
In the same film, Aidan Quinn sounded more Irish-American than Irish.
I despise Meryl Streep.
One definition of art that I always held was that it should look like its natural. Yo Yo Ma has to do scales every day to play like he does. Barishnakov did warm ups and barre exercises every day. Pavorati does his scales and arpegios. None of that is art, its the work needed to get to the art. With Meryl Streep you see the work every time. Frankly, I dont want to see the damn scales. Her acting is like that and so are her accents. I can never watch her and not see Meryl Streep as such and such a role instead of just seeing the role.
Yes but his imdb biography says:
His American accent isn’t really “fake”, but the result of years of self-training. It would be interesting to hear him try to play an English character.
Antonio Banderas in The Thirteenth Warrior has got to be the worst accent ever in a movie. The guy’s supposed to be playing an Arab, but his speech says I Am A Native Speaker of Spanish. Oh, my. I burst out laughing when I heard his voiceover at the beginning of the film: Een my contree… It was so bad that it was good. Not to mention that Antonio Banderas does not look even slightly Middle Eastern. Truly Ed Wood-caliber casting, there.
When some friends came out of Interview with a Vampire one of them said of Antonio Banderas:
“That guy had the worst fake accent.”
I also vote for Bob Hoskins. Cate Blanchett.
And I’ll also add Tom Berenger (American), for some of the regional American accents he can do. He’s surprised me a couple of times with authentic sounding regional accents.
I rented Lost in La Mancha the other day about Terry Gilliam’s never-completed movie about Don Quixote. Jean Rochefort was to play Don Quixote. He is a Frenchman wo had to learn English to play the role in Gilliam’s movie about a mad Spanish nobleman.
Rochefort did not sound Spanish. Not even close. He sounded like a pissed of French waiter. His accent was undeniably, utterly French. And in the documentary of the doomed film, Gilliam is fussing about adding a bit of prosthetic make-up to Rochefort’s face, to make his French nose more Spanish looking.
I kept thinking, “yeah, but what are you gonna do when he has to say something?”
On the flip side, there’s footage of Johnny Depp and Rochefort doing a read through, and Depp unconciously picks up Rochefort’s accent, so when they are discussing the characters, you hear Depp using this weird accent unintentionally. Has nothing to do with the part (he was going to be an American in the movie).
Harry Shearer is a natural - he does have to portray several dozen voices on The Simpsons, after all. And Christopher Guest can completely switch vocal masks between movies (southerner, effeminate artiste, folksinger, six-fingered man. . .)
I cringed every time he opened his mouth. And it didn’t seem to get more bearable as the movie continued… :eek:
Emma Thompson does a very convincing American accent in Primary Colors.
And I’ve read that Patrick Stewart actually tried a French accent for Picard, but dropped it when it was determined that he sounded like Inspector Clouseau. 
Uh, maybe not NOW. But the movie was set in 1898, with a bunch of uneducated street kids in Brooklyn. Personally, I thought Christian Bale did a fantastic job.
As for good and bad, I’m terrible at judging accents, but what about that Russian guy on Star Trek? They got the sounds mixed up! The Russian alphabet has no W sound-therefore, he wouldn’t say things like “wessels and wiolations!” More like, ve vill (bury you!), etc.
What the HELL was Roddenberry smoking, anyway?
How much more French can you get??
I forgot to mention Daniel Day Lewis’ turn in GANGS OF NEW YORK. I don’t know how much of the accent he used was his creation v. that of a dialect coach, but it was brilliant: you could hear both the faded voices of his lower class English parents/grandparents and the beginnings of the modern NYC accent while at the same time not impeding the drama of the performance. (Unfortunately the movie itself sucked.)
Actually, he used a wax cylinder recording of Walt Whitman reading “Leaves of Grass” as his model for that accent. And I must respectfully disagree with you. The movie did not suck.
The only foreign actor I’ve ever heard really nail the Australian accent was Helena Bonham-Carter in Til Human Voices Wake Us. Freakishly accurate, and I’ve never heard anyone else do as well.
Shame the movie wasn’t as good.
Having spent four years in New England, I found his accent believable. A bit over the top at times, perhaps, somewhat stereotyped, but believable.
Yes, that was TRULY awful.
Speaking of James Marsters as Spike in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”…he can not only do a convincing English accent, he can also do a convincing “Englishman trying to sound American but failing miserably” accent, as I recall from at least one episode of that show. How many actors can do that?
Justin Theroux’s Irish accent was pitiful in Charlie’s Angels 2 [as Seamus, the villian]. But I’ll forgive him for looking so damn hot!
Interestingly, the woman playing Arquette’s mother in that movie (Carmen Ferland) was a local and her accent was, well, local, and perfectly appropriate.
Considering the other star power in that movie, it should have been easy to just not cast Arquette in the first place and rather find a sexy Quebec actress to play Oz’s duplicitous wife.