…in a TV show/film. And the nominees are…
I just caught a re-run of ‘Dead Again’ starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. I was really impressed with KB’s American accent. ET’s was so-so.
Another that comes to mind is Ralph Fiennes in ‘Schindler’s List’.
Mike Myers as his own father in So I Married and Axe Murder.
“Oh, tha’ was a bit offsides, I suppose. 'E’ll cry ‘imself to sleep toni’. With is haid on ‘is hyuge pilla’”
But her American accent in Primary Colors is very convincing. For that matter, so is Kate Beckinsale’s in Pearl Harbor, although she didn’t have a single decent line of dialogue to say in it.
How about “The Nanny”'s butler… a great British accent if I ever heard one.
I like Scotty in Star Trek. Is he from the Canadian Highlands?
Brad Pitt’s accent in Snatch.
No, no, no! The best by far is John Hillerman’s fake English accent on Magnum PI. If I hadn’t seen Blazing Saddles I would have fallen for it!
My vote goes to James Cromwell as Farmer Hoggitt in Babe. Watch him in Citizen Baines, his new TV show. Can ya believe it’s the same guy?
Reminds me of an appearance James Doohan made on a talk show here in the UK. He explained that the reason he got the Star Trek job was because he was so good at accents, and gave us a rendition of his “Scottish” and “Irish”. Apart from sounding nothing like Scots or Irish, they were identical.
Jack Batty
Not particularly disagreeing with your choice, but just in case you were in any doubt, Mike Myers’s dad IRL wasn’t Scottish either.
I’ve heard people saying that Natasha Kinski’s West Country English accent in Tess was bad, but I was impressed with it. She certainly didn’t sound German. Any Dorset Dopers care to comment?
Yep, he is the pride Pampa, Texas.
My vote for best accent will always be Meryl Streep. She always nails it.
Although I do enjoy Bob Hoskins.
Ed Bagley Jr. is considered by those in the know to be the best, I am told. Often he is called in to work with actors so that they might get the accent just right.
But this discussion may well be a thing of the past because as was noted in an early thread, some of the studios are already “sweetening” their actors accents with the aide of special effects (I believe the example given was the father in Stuart Little.
Meryl Streep? Hmmm.
HAlso, here’s a pre-emptive strike in case anybody nominates Johnny Depp’s attempt as an opium-addicted London detective tracking Jack the Ripper in the Hughes brothers’ From Hell. It may sound pretty good from the other side of the Atlantic, but nobody in Whitechapel will be fooled. He probably got it from Kate Moss.
Jon Voight, for his incredibly dead-on flawless Southern accent in The Rainmaker. Yes, it was an eclectic accent, but perfectly consistent. He never slipped.
Taking second place would be Robert Duvall, who positively nailed his Southern accent in The Apostle.
Believe it or not, Southern is quite difficult to do. It’s more than just diphthongs.
Gwyneth Paltrow in ‘Sliding Doors’. Required to do two different English accents using completely different idioms. Nailed them both convincingly.
Mel Gibson’s American accent is not bad.
Why would Gwyneth Paltrow do two different accents in Sliding Doors? It was one character. The two plots only differed in what happened at one point and the consequences of it over the next several months.
And her upper-class English accents in Shakespeare in Love and Emma are amazing (from an American standpoint, anyway). Of course, reading Shakespeare gives anyone a slight accent by way of proper enunciation and pronunciation (even me, who sucks at accents). I really thought Gwyneth was British after seeing Emma.
It would be strange if reading Shakespeare gave you a modern British accent, since the accent Shakespeare really spoke sounds no more like modern British English than it does like modern American English. Incidentally, have you seen the opening monologue that Gwyneth Paltrow did on Saturday Night Live when she was host? She made fun of all her British accents in films.
Connie Nielsen’s (Lucilla) accent in Gladiator. Slays me.
Angelica Huston’s Buffalo accent in Buffalo 66. It was like listening to my mom! It’s a hard accent to do, and seeing as very few people actually know or care how it’s supposed to sound, I am impressed that she bothered to get it right.
Tim Roth does American accents very well (as far as this brit can tell). I’m sure some american reviewer praised him as being one of the best american actors of his generation after his appearances in Resevoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.