TWDuke corrected me - Basil doesn’t say ‘American’ but does call her a cloth-eared bint.
I thought she was American because she speaks throughout with an american accent; - not least that she pronounces Fawlty with a long aww - ‘Fourlty’ whereas the Major et al use the british ‘Folty’.
I had never imagined that she was supposed to be british until reading this thread yesterday. I’m now wondering whether her background was ever mentioned, but she made no attempt to disguise her accent.
MiM
I think you’re right, but for the wrong reasons. 
I think it’s more about media saturation. If you grow up listening to American TV accents (and many of us non-Americans do) you just develop a feel for it - it’s not as difficult as learning a complete new accent.
Having said that I like Brad Pitt when he does his Pikey accent.
I’m with you - I always took the character to be American. My impression was that Connie Booth was using her natural, American-who’s-spent-a-lot-of-time-in-Britain accent. Similar to the accents of people like Madonna or Bill Bryson.
It all depends. The US is a big place, with lots of different accents. Bad Southern is the most common “mock American accent” I can think of. Mah wuhd, haow do theyyy tway, shugah.
That said, as a foreigner, I admit I couldn’t tell a good British accent from a bad American one - I can only really identify the marked ones, like Scottish, Cockney or Australian.
ETA : oh, and I second the mention of Brad Pitt. He’s terrific for accents - both his Pikey role, and his latest work in Inglorious Basterds were awesome. It’s annoying, really - great looking, smart AND talented ? I hope he’s got the tiniest dick to make up for it all.
His accent was good but the performance as a whole was a tour de force. The manerisms and the general “fuck you” attitude of the Irish Traveler were pitched perfectly.
I have to really listen to get all of what he’s saying but that’s true of real travellers as well so nothing new there.
The periwinkle blue bit always cracks me up.
For those who haven’t seen Snatch. Here’s Pitt doing a “Pikey” or Traveller as we call them in Ireland(The insulting term over here is “Knacker” BtW and only to be used in their presence if you are up for a fight and like listening to "Golden Brown)
How about the two leads from Spinal Tap. Great English accents that never break or call attention to themselves.
Like Gillian Anderson, Christopher Guest (the 5th Baron Haden-Guest) might be able to claim both American and British accents as his “own.”
But not Michael McKean, who does a phenomenal job.
And I’m glad LC Strawhouse brought up Tap, because that reminded me of one of the best put-on British accents in the biz: Paul Benedict, aka “Mr. Bentley” from The Jeffersons. I never knew he wasn’t British until I read his obituaries.
One thing that I think goes into our perception of whether or not a guy does a good accent is whether we know that they are “native” speakers. For instances, as an American, I don’t really notice generic American accents all that much. If a guy sounds a little weird, I usually just put that down to the actor’s particular cadence or voice. However, if I know that the guy is actually not American, then I’m much more likely to notice when they f*ck up the accent.
To give two recent examples, I occasionally watch The Mentalist, with Simon Baker, and Sons of Anarchy, with Charlie Hunnam, and at first I didn’t realize that either was non-American, I just thought they had distincitive speaking patterns. However, now that I know that they are non-Americans, it is very obvious that they are actually mangling their attempt at the accent.
To give an even more over-the-top example: when I first saw SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, I just assumed he was a weird and pretentious American who speaks in a peculiar and off-putting way; maybe the actor was a regular guy from Iowa hamming it up for a part, or, for all I knew, maybe he always talks like that.
Of course, it’s now impossible to re-watch the movie without realizing that, oh, wait – nobody talks like that.
I can’t evaluate her accent from any experience basis but found it interesting that it was convincing enough that people on a music forum later complained that they used a British actress in her role in “Cold Mountain”.
If I may share a possibly-relevant anecdote:
This past May, I took my family to western Sicily to do some field work with me. We’re American, and I have an accent that I’d describe as “faintly but noticibly Texan”. But because we were speaking English in a place where few Americans tread, it was frequently assumed that we were inglesi.
I was having this conversation with a friend recently, and I think it’s because there’s a lot of regional accents and linguistic quirks in America and our population is so mixed that mispronunciations don’t sound like “reverting to British,” it just tends to sound like a regional variation (especially since some east coast accents sound kinda British-y to a Midwesterner).
Now, if the actor is attempting a fixed, well-known accent like a Texas drawl or a Brooklyn accent, it might be easier to catch. But if they’re just employing a generic “American” accent, it can be tough to notice even if they slip occasionally. I think I’ve heard Hugh Laurie in the character of House occasionally botch the accent slightly, but my brain always just accepts it as a regional thing coupled with an eccentric personality.
Conversely, the UK is a smaller nation and, in my experience, the citizens pay more attention to regional accents AND then there’s Received Pronunciation which is a VERY specific accent and EXTREMELY difficult for an American to adopt convincingly.
I take it as a point of pride that when I was in England, I was frequently mistaken for a Canadian. I assume I must have sounded like a generic North American (not counting Mexico) to my hosts. All that effort of getting rid of my oil field trash Texas drawl paid off.
Unless, of course, Canadians sound like oil field trash Texans.
On a vaguely related note, I’ve listened to friends of mine mock John Barrowman for his phony American accent on Torchwood and Doctor Who. It made me laugh because it’s the same accent he uses in interviews and hosting gigs, and Barrowman grew up in the states and still holds a U.S. passport. On the other hand, he lived in Scotland as a child, and of course has been spending a lot of time in England and Wales.
So are my ignorant friends finding failing to recognize one of their own, or are they picking up a hint of foreignness that my ears are missing?
Speaking as a real Irish person, Julia Roberts’ Irish accent is woeful. It’s that crappy Darby O’Gill-ish stage oirish that seems to be the default Irish accent for non-native actors. That said, I’d imagine it isn’t the easiest accent to fake without overdoing it.
Opposite direction: Briton Marianne Jean-Baptiste on Without a Trace sounded just like my aunt and uncle whose accents are Queens-by-way-of-Bermuda. I appreciated that point of authenticity.
I think a lot of people who aren’t from in or around Texas just don’t have a realistic idea of what a Texas accent sounds like. Further confusing matters is the fact that there’s not just one Texas accent, there are regional variations.
My mother has a very strong East Texas accent, which went largely unremarked upon while my family was living in the South but attracted a lot of attention once we moved to Wisconsin. Interestingly, although people comment on her accent all the time, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Wisconsinite place it correctly. Some people guess Tennessee, Georgia, or occasionally Oklahoma which isn’t too far off, but she’s also regularly asked if she’s from Australia. And these are Americans doing the asking, so sometimes even Americans aren’t good at recognizing an authentic Texas accent when they hear one!
Since this thread is mentioning actors/accents in both directions, I’ll throw in Tracey Ullman. When watching her in something like I Love You To Death it’s easy to forget she’s a Brit.
I had the same view on Captain Jack at first. I think it’s a combination of a few tiny quirks in his accent that might trigger my “uncanny” sensors and the fact that his delivery as Jack has a cadence to it that reminds me of the cliche of Brits learning American accents from newsreels and war films.
I was surprised to learn that he speaks with his natural accent and is American. Not SHOCKED, but surprised.