I was astounded by Jamie Griffith (Sci Fi’s Battlestar Galactica) the first time I heard him in an interview and realized he was British. I would never have guessed from his portrayal of Apollo.
Years after seeing that movie, I was really shocked to learn that he’s British. I’ve seen plenty of British actors do passable American accents, but not like that.
Hugh Laurie is British?!?
He’s got the American accent nailed then.
I saw him on PBS in some type of skit/play/soap and he was speaking with a very good British accent, no wonder.
As an example, the bolded part of your post told me you were a Brit without ever having to refer to your “Location.” Word choice. 
On the flip, a recent episode of Doctor Who had a heroic time-traveling american con man in a couple of episodes. I was convinced that he was a Brit doing a terrible American accent. I ranted to my wife about how fake the accent was, and couldn’t they get a real American in all of England?
Then they had an interview clip with the actor. Whaddya know, he’s American! :dubious: He can’t even speak his own accent convincingly!
Interesting, as Juliet Landau lived in London until she was 18.
I always thought she was intentionally overdoing it.
To be fair, John Barrowman is a Scot who was brought up in the US and then came back to the UK as an adult. It’s no wonder his accent is messed up.
He started his career in the UK as a children’s TV presenter.
You just got lucky: BBC productions are riddled with British actors doing some of the worst accents in Christendom. There’s a satire of the Bush administration on BBC radio tonight, written by the guy who wrote MAS*H, which just the kind of thing I love, but I just can’t bring myself to listen to it, as I know it’ll be full of people who sound like southern belle cowboys from New York.
Ahh, that explains it. What tipped me off was his continued mis-pronunciation (for an American) of “barrage” balloon. You see, we say buh-RAHJ. You say BEAR-uhj. It was causing me fits.
I was pleasantly surprised when Orlando Bloom correctly pronounced “Oregon” in Elizabethtown.
Another vote for Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors; it was excellent; not just the accent, but the whole intonation, cadence and other nuances too absolutely spot on.
Of course, there is no single ‘British’ accent, just the same as there is no single American one.
Missed this first time around:
I’m afraid to say, his English accent in that movie was absolutely appalling. One of the worst I’ve ever heard, just behind Mr Van Dyke. A great disappointment, since I love his acting, and it was an interesting movie. For me, his accent was the weak point in it.
I’d only seen Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine (yes, really) and I was surprised that she was British. Though it did clear up some confusion about the two or three words that sounded weird in the movie.
Sometimes this assumtion can backfire…I remember hearing an edition of Feedback, where they’d had lots of complaints about two dreadully-stereotyped fake accents - a Hungarian character on the Archers, and the actor reading Last Man Down as book of the week. Needless to say, it turned out that they were native Hungarian and Brooklyn actors respectively.
I remember the Hungarian chap on the Archers, and I have to say, despite his heritage, he did sound like he was straight out of Eton.
I always thought Juliet Landau’s accent as Drusilla was supposed to be “complete loony” …
Despite strong competition from Mr. Van Dyke, the worst attempt at an English accent I’ve ever heard has got to be Brion James in <i>Tango and Cash</i>.
Someone’s been hitting the HTML way too hard. (I put vB square brackets round something on a very prominent website yesterday and made it go live. Veh embarrassing.)
I recall Hugh Laurie humorously describing that attempt at an accent as a virtual act of war.
I find Laurie’s House accent to be just a little strange. Where is the character supposed to be from? To me it sounds like a slightly better version of the John Cleese “American” accent. All clenched in the neck and jaw- and way too precise for my tastes.