Iben Hjelje, who is a Dane, played an American in High Fidelity and her performance suffered from the “trying too hard” stiff face and mouth control.
Some people (like, say Gillian Anderson) slip in and out of accents without thinking, because it’s what they’ve grown up doing.
I do it myself- my mother is Zimbabwean, but if I wanted to fit in at my local school I had to sound like everyone else, and that meant a broad Northern Irish accent. Still, though, when I went home I’d speak like my mother. Now my accent reflects who I’m speaking to- slightly South African to my parents, Northern irish to my husband, and Dublin to my patients. It’s not conscious, it’s just what happens.
IMO the best accents are the ones that the actors aren’t aware that they have put on because it’s just another voice that they naturally use.
Sometimes, of course, it’s all the fault of the dialect coach. Take Brad Pitt- he does a very passable Irish Traveller in Snatch, because presumably his dialect coach had actually heard one.
However, as a Northern Irish terrorist, he fails totally. The dialect coach had obviously heard lots of Northern Irish people speak, but hadn’t picked up that every town in Northern Ireland has its own accent. My husband, for example has a Coleraine accent, while his best friend has a Ballymoney accent- the two towns are about 10 miles apart, but have their own distinctive accents. Thus, to someone from Northern Ireland Brad Pitt obviously sounds like someone putting on an accent, because he moves from one end of the country to the other, working class to middle class, Protestant to Catholic in a single sentence.
If they had decided he was say a working class Catholic Derryman, found one, and got Pitt to copy him, they’d have been fine. Instead they tried to go for generic “Norn Irish” and failed miserably.
Thanks, guys!
I was pronouncing Oregon wrong. :o
As for the OP, I agree Gwyneth Paltrow can put on a convincing English accent. If I hadn’t known who she was I would have been fooled. Renee Zellweger’s wasn’t bad, but your could tell on certain words.
I always thought the Spinal Tap guys were putting an “out of it” funny accent on to make fun of Ozzy Osbourne.
As I have hinted, my view on the matter that it isn’t a matter of “right” or “wrong.” Rather, it’s simply a matter that the local pronunciation is different from the general pronunciation. It’s not all that unusual. Take a look at Kolkata/Calcutta. Before the recent change, the English pronunciation was “Calcutta,” the general Indian pronunciation was (and still is) Kalkatta, the general Bengali pronunciation was (and still is) “Kolkata” (now the official one), and the local Calcutta pronunciation was (and still is) “Kolikata.”
Yeah, I see what you mean. Nice to be able to pronounce it like the locals though, because people tend to appreciate that. 
Thanks, again!
On Fresh Air, LaPaglia said he was pretty broke, and he did most of his work by listening to a tape of Dog Day Afternoon, repeating the lines, and taping himself to compare, then trying to pass in NYC. Also, he now has a pretty American accent IRL. He adopted it because casting directors who knew he was Australian would complain that they could hear his accent when he did American. As soon as he pretended to be from Brooklyn, he didn’t have that problem anymore.
While this is certainly noticeable when dealing with Northern Irish accents (because of the added element of Protestant/Catholic identity to the mix), it’s not a unique error. I’ve never heard a remotely-convincing East Anglian accent come from any actor, because there’s the similar problem of genericism, and also that it probably takes either a local or a linguist to spot the differences between localities, and the added difficulty of ensuring the social connotations are the correct ones.
I pronounce it OR-uh-gun, and I’m not from the Pacific Northwest, nor have I had much exposure (if any) to Oregonians… Then again, growing up, when the game Oregon Trail was popular, I did pronounce it OR-eh-GON.
That’s why he’s Hollywood’s top-paid actor, and that’s why he can get the girl every man (and many women) want.
I’ve never heard a British opinion on her accent, but I remember my first “An AMERICAN??” shock was Lisa Eichhorn as Jean in the movie Yanks. I was obsessed with that movie and saw it several times. I never would have thought that Eichhorn was anything but a smart, quiet, sweet, working-class English girl. Years later I saw her in something else where she spoke her normal upstate New York accent and I was FLOORED! I’ve never had a bigger accent shock, except…
My biggest “A BRIT??” moment came after seeing a film festival screening of the movie Tumbleweeds, where Janet McTeer plays a loud, brassy Southern woman. This was of course several months before the movie opened and McTeer being nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. The director and McTeer were there after the screening to answer questions. Someone asked her a question and as soon as she started speaking the whole audience gasped in shock, then started applauding (again). A Brit?? WOW!!
Man, that’s sad to hear. Some of my favorite films are Australian. I think your country does movies very very well.
“i” as in “eye” or as in “eee”? Because OR-eye-gun sounds awfully weird. OR-eee-gun is how I’ve always said it.
At the time when she was nominated for an Oscar I saw several interviews with her and you’re right, she always sounds naturally American. Then one of the entertainment shows showed an interview from South African television from when she was a teenage model, and she spoke in her normal SA accent. That was another FLOORED moment, and I even knew she was from South Africa! The difference was HUGE! The accent was VERY thick and I could barely understand what she was saying (she was speaking English too). As if her scary good performance in Monster wasn’t enough, that made me respect the HELL out of her.
The way I’ve always said “Oregon” is “Or-uh-gun.” How does Orlando say it?
Ditto Toni Collette.
Not even Meryl Streep?
By the way, how do you pronounce Alabama? Just curious.
How about Brad Dourif in the LOTR? Whenever I hear him speak now, his (real) American accent sounds incredibly fake.
Of course it sounds awfully weird. The answer is neither. “I” as in “rig,” which, when in an unstressed syllable, is often pretty close to “uh.”
Revenant Threshold writes:
> How about Brad Dourif in the LOTR? Whenever I hear him speak now, his (real)
> American accent sounds incredibly fake.
Well, for us long-time filmgoers, Brad Dourif’s real accent is well known. He’s been around as a major character actor since at least One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He’s always cast as a weird character and even sounds a bit weird.
It’s a great accent, to be sure. However, it’s not what I would call an “American” accent. I’m not sure it’s intended to be one either, judging by the number of times his character is referred to as “that Limey cocksucker”.
I happened to see I Heart Huckabees last night. I thought Jude Law’s American accent was pretty good. I only detected a couple of minor slips.
To continue the hijack, I’ve lived my entire life in California, moved to Oregon three years ago, and never have I ever heard anyone pronounce it “ore-eh-GONE” and mean it. Only in jest.
Who goes around saying “ore-eh-GONE”?
What ascenray said. It’s unstressed and almost like the word “organ” with a little “uh” tucked in the middle.
A-la-BA-m’uh. All short As apart from the last syllable. Am I right?
You know, there’s a simple enough solution to this problem. Any given British actor should pick a particular American to imitate exclusively–preferably a “generic American” who could be from anywhere. I nominate Brad Pitt as a good start. His own attempts to do foreign accents tend to come out … strange, but his normal speaking voice is a perfectly non-descript American-English accent.
Huh. Funny, I think her natural Philly accent is so sexy. But I can see why she would try something like that.
I am not from 'Bama, but Al-uh-BA-muh sounds more American to me. Subtle difference, true, but it’s there. Also, I’m not sure the ‘m’ belongs exclusively to the syllable either before or after it.