Some Irish dopers can help me. I remember a magazine (I think it was Entertainment Weekly) that rated Irish accents. They asked genuine Irish people for their opinions. Brad Pitt was highly praised for his accent. Most Americans didn’t recognize it because it was a Belfast accent and not what Americans are used to hearing. The occasion for the poll was Richard Gere’s awfull Irish accent in The Jackal so that my contribution.
Having grown up in New Jersey, I know what people who live there sound like. Almost no one gets a Jersey accent right. Too many people have it confused with a Brooklyn accent, for some reason. The Sopranos gets Jersey right.
The Sopranos get it sorta right for that small part of Jersey only. A real Jersey accent is Gandolphini when he is not in character. See also Danny Devito, John Travolta, Jack Nicholson etc etc.
I would say there’s less consensus in Ireland on his accent than there is on most Americans’ Irish accents, which is itself something of a compliment (very few Americans face anything other than universal derision for their attempts).
As someone who has never lived in Belfast, but has lived among a number of Belfast expats and travels there fairly often, I’d say Pitt generally got the tone of the Belfast accent right, but his pronunciation comes and goes.
Connery should really get his own thread. He doesn’t even sound Scottish! What the hell is he? As the years go on, he sounds more and more like he’s doing a drunken parody of himself. Orr shuld I shey, himshelf.
The wandering accent that confused a generation - Carrie Fisher in Star Wars. First she has a fakey-sounding English accent, then she doesn’t. And apparently it runs in the family, because Natalie Portman does the same thing in The Phantom Menace. Weird.
That seems to be an artistic convention in American movies - the bad guys have vaguely-menacing British accents. In almost any war or spy movie, the Germans and Russians seem to switch over to them after a token couple of lines in the real languages. An American just couldn’t do Emperor Palpatine or any of his minions effectively, and James Earl Jones’ voice is hardly typically American anyway.
Props to Kenneth Branagh as the *only * British actor I’ve ever heard do an American accent well enough that an American doesn’t notice anything at all off, in Dead Again. Emma Thompson, then his wife, couldn’t quite manage it in that one.
That was Vernon Wells, and he is Australian. He was also in Mad Max. If his accent grated in Commando, it’s probably because the director told him, “You don’t sound Australian enough: you gotta punch it up!” I mean, was anything in that movie plausible?
Actually, I thought Bob Hoskins did a great job in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Compare his voice with that in any of his other films.
Personally, I thought his best accent was from Innerspace 
Harrison Ford’s Russian in “K-19:The Widowmaker”. It may not be the WORST accent ever, but it really grated at me in the previews I saw for it as being not really Russian, but closer to Yugoslavian.
Then again, I could be wrong (or the character might not’ve been russian, I didnt see the movie.)
I’ll agree with that! Roger Rabbit was the first movie I ever saw him in, and it wasn’t until I saw him in a couple more movies that I realized he wasn’t an American.
My nomination has to go to some horrible piece of drek that Van Damme did some years ago (can’t even remember the title) in which he had a now-you-hear-it, now-you-don’t American accent.
Christopher Lambert in the Highlander movies. I don’t know if he was worse when he was trying to sound American, or when he was trying to sound Scottish.
Brando’s hick accent in The Wild One is really atrocious.
From what I hear, Carrie Fisher had just been taking lessons in London before ANH, and so she picked up a little of an accent.
You said it. His voice work in Super Mario Bros. is also superb. (;)) Seeing him do British (I think he’s naturally got a Cockney accent) is what feels weird.
John Wayne tried to sound Mongol as Ghengis Khan in The Conqueror, but wound up sounding like Mongo from Blazing Saddles.
Maybe a generic American accent, but Wild wild west was trully painful.
The best American accent I have ever heard was Eamon Walker as Kareem Said in Oz. It really blew me away when I saw him in an interview and heard his normal voice, and found out he wasn’t American. He does the American ‘Angry tough Black man’ voice perfectly
Wha-huh? I thought she got it dead-on in that movie, enough that it’s always stood out as one of the best examples of a non-southerner doing a southern accent. I know tons of people who talk exactly like that!
His wasn’t the worst of all the ear-splitting accents in that movie, but it definitely wasn’t good.
Actually, Jessica Lange’s was the most convincing, and (IMO) Albert Finney’s after that. Finney not so much because it sounded like a real Alabama accent, but because he didn’t sound like he was affecting anything. Helena Bonham Carter’s wasn’t way off, but it sounded very affected, much like Kenneth Brannagh’s American accent in Dead Again.
Maybe it was just one of his better attempts, but the first movie I saw either him or Emma Thompson in was Dead Again and I was shocked to later find out that neither of them was American.
I agree completely.