Elijah Woods in the Rings movies. It’s pat high school fake British.
Carrie Fisher in Star Wars. She starts out with the high school fake British (I’m thinking mostly for the “foul stench” line) and then it just goes away for the next two and a half movies.
I live in Maine. I don’t live “Downeast” which is essentially the remote, rural part of the coast … up from the “cities” of Portland and Brunswick, etc. I have visited that area and there are a few practitioners of the … “A-yuh, ya cay-an’t get theh from hee-ah” … speak, but not half as thick or as bad as pretty much any character from any movie set in Maine. And most definitely you won’t find that sort of accent away from the rural coast.
Fred Gwynne in Pet Cemetary springs prominently to mind.
The 3 leads accents in Spinal Tap are undoubtedlz the best English accents I’ve ever heard. I just assumed all 3 guys were English until IMDB told me otherwise.
For bad accents, well it’s certainly not the worst ever, but Sean Astin in LOTR attempts the kind of accent that is always used in Britain to portray “simple country folk”- a devon accent. As a native Devonian, I can see what he was trying to do, but it doesn’t quite work. Not that it has to be 100% accurate in a fantasy film of course, but sometimes his natural accent just seems to shine through really obviously, which I find quite distracting.
Short of a Wacky Races live action movie, Daniel Day Lewis’ performance in the pitiful “Gangs of New York” is the closest we will get to Dick Dastardly in a non-animated film.
Don’t Russians call it Moskva? I had a Russian friend who told me that once and they call it that in Sweden as well (IIRC the English pronunciation comes from German).
That’s right. Moscow is Moskva (stress on the second syllable) and vodka is vodka, stressed on the first syllable as in English. The word vodka is the diminutive of voda (stressed on the second syllable), ‘water’: vodka is literally ‘little water’.
Undoubtedly yes, amanset and Jabba. However, I worked with two young women who did, in fact, call it (to me, at least) by the Americanized name of Moscow, and they pronounced it MOSS-koh. Saying it over again in my head tells me there’s a chance that I just couldn’t hear the V sound if it were pronounced with sufficient subtlety, but I’ve got pretty good ears for that stuff. Even so, it doesn’t rule out a vocal sound similar enough to English-W that Chekov (in Guinistasia’s post) could use.
shrug I heard 'em say it, I promise. 
FISH
Ah, but the KOH sound in Moscow isn’t what I’m talking about. I mean the W sound in words like, well, “word, well, what, when, where, why?”
Not the ow, ty. That could be achieved with an “ou”.
[hijack]Don’t know if she can sing. Today’s computer software is capable of turning even off-key singers into at least bearable singers.
She definitely can’t dance. She did very little footwork in the tango sequence in Chicago, and the end sequence with Renee is almost all strutting and fast cuts. Apart from that, I agree with you.[/hijack]
Now, as already noted, Costner’s accent in Robin Hood was of truly epic proportions. I still remember walking into Blockbuster and – without realizing what was playing on the overhead screens – thought “what’s a surfer dude doing in Sherwood forest?”
But the worst accent of the year has to belong to Nicole Kidman. Now, she is one of my favorite actors, and I’ll go a long way to cut her slack, but I about fell out of my chair at her narration during the “Cold Mountain” coming attraction. She overstressed the accent to comic proportions (the narration didn’t help as well with its “come back to me, come back to me” pleading. James Brown can pull it off, but not Nicole).
The only actress who did a worse Southern accent was Carol Burnett in her “Gone With the Wind” parody, but at least she meant to be funny.
Most actors portraying Southern accents suck. But one of the worst I’ve ever heard was Nicolas Cage in Con Air. I live in Alabama, not far from Mobile, and I’ve never heard anyone there talk like that! Actors need to wake up and realize that Southerners no longer live on plantations and talk as if all we had in the world to do was sit on the veranda and drink mint juleps! NEWSFLASH!! NOT ALL SOUTHERN ACCENTS SOUND THE SAME!!
I think that John Hillerman is a genius. I was floored when I found out he was a Texan! Before then, I thought he was truly English, and did a really good Texas accent in Magnum, p.i. (“My name is Elmo Ziller and I poke from Hondo, Texas!”).
This, I would contend, would be the fault in equal parts of the director and the editor. That is, if this trivia from imdb is true:
Frankly, I find the movie a better parody than Men In Tights 
Ok, I will change my position then, I think Meryl Streep did a dreadful vocal impersonation of Lindy Chamberlain who happens to be an aussie with a strong and strident accent. Streep played it strong and strident alright but it was not reminiscent of the original.
I am 100% with you on australian regional accents but few seem to hear them which is ridiculous given our landmass and differing influences. I remember running into 2 queensland fellers in Chicago and I had to interpret for them as their accents were so hard for the locals to deal with. If we all sounded the same I would have been as unintelligable too.
What language were they speaking?
When I speak Swedish I say Göteborg, but when I speak English I say Gothenburg.
Glad to see Peter Sellars being mentioned for his outstanding American accent as President Merkin Muffley.
Also, his unique French accent for Inspector Clousseau is amazing. What part of France is that supposed to be anyway? LOL
And for losing one’s accent, a special mention has to go to Jonathan Harris (yes Dr Smith from “Lost In Space”), who grew up in the Bronx and totally lost that accent through acting.
“Halo Mayree Puppins!”
Hey, how about a classic?
I’ve always heard that Vivian Leigh’s Southern in “Gone With The Wind” was quite acceptable.
Ryan O’Neal was almost costnerian in Barry Lyndon.
I know it’s totally over the top, but Hank Azaria’s Spanish accent in America’s Sweethearts was one of the funniest accents I’ve heard in a long time. I dated a Puerto Rican girl for almost 6 years and am keenly aware of how other Spanish-speaking countries make fun of the Spanish for their lisp (ssssssssservesssaa!), so this just cracks me up.
Being from the South, I too get cheesed at most fake Southern accents. I believe that the University of Georgia once did a study and identified something like 37 distinct Southern accents. Hollywood only seems to think that “Southern = Texas”, so it pisses me off to no end to see someone who’s supposed to be from Georgia have a Texas accent (see Jamie Luner in the old TV show Savannah). Most of the time when I see this crap I scream “lawdy, lawdy Miz Scarlett! I don’t know nutin’ ‘bout birthin’ no babies!”
NOTE: I scream this at home with DVDs, not in crowded movie theatres.
Vivian Leigh don’t know nothin’ 'bout no Southern accent.
At least Clark Gable had the dignity to refuse to do a fake accent. Better that than to hear the accent attempted and mangled.
I’m not sure what movie it was that he had an American accent in, but I recall being very suprosed when I figured out that Alan Cumming was Scottish (Scotch?).
It must have been Romy and michele’s high scholl reunion or another similar crapfest.
Scottish.