“Because, unlike some other Robin Hoods, I speak with an English accent!”
– Cary Elwes, Robin Hood: Men In Tights
That reminds me, Helena Bonham Carter’s American accent in Fight Club is dead on.
Having seen X-Men, I didn’t know that Hugh Jackman wasn’t American, so he did a pretty good job.
Yeah, what’s up with Sean Connery? He’s apparently decided that all his characters are Scottish immigrants to wherever the movie is set, which is way worse than all of Harrison Ford’s characters have been hit on the chin. That brings up my questions of how the James Bond situation was handled. I thought Bond was pointedly English, and then they cast Connery.
I’m still waiting for an answer on James Marsters.
My two cents: most British, Irish, Scottish, Kiwi and Aussie actors who work steadily in Hollywood do American accents quite well, in my opinion. A handful are terrible; a handful make the mistake of trying to sound American by removing all traces of ANY accent from their voices (Kenneth Branagh, the whole Monty Python gang) and end up sounding like robots. But on the whole, the foreign crowd do American accents very, very well indeed. In fact, I find that British or Australian actors often do American regional accents much better than Americans from other regions! An Australian is liable to do a much better Texas drawl than an actor from California, and Brits frequently do better Noo Yawk accents than actors from the Midwest.
As a Yank, I don’t feel qualified to judge whether any American actor’s attempts at a foreign accent are really authentic or convincing. But when an accent is wretchedly bad, it’s obvious even to me! Even the most provincial rube in America knew that Dick van Dyke’s Cockney accent was pathetic. I mean, I have NO talent for foreign accents at all, but I’d wager even I could do a better Cockney than Van Dyke!
Look, Gwyneth Paltrow’s English accent is good enough to fool me, and to fool most Yanks. So is Renee Zellweger’s. For all I know, their accents may sound hopelessly fake to real Englishmen, but since we Americans make up most of the target audience for American films, it’s enough that the accents fool us.
And THAT may be a big part of the reason that foreign actors do American accents so much better than Americans do foreign actors! An American actor who’s playing an Irishman doesn’t HAVE to affect a perfect brogue. As long as his accent is good enough to fool the American mass audience, he has no incentive to work on it. But an Irish actor who wants to play an American in a movie aimed at the mass American audience DOES have to sound American enough to fool his audience.
And since working in Hollywood PAYS a hell of a lot better than working in England, Ireland, Australia or New Zealand, a foreign actor has plenty of incentive to get the accents right!
Well, I think it’s really sad if any actors take that attitude and I would definitely lose a ton of respect for them if they did. Frankly I doubt that they do, because non-American actors (like non-Americans in general) know that the U.S. is not the entire world and that there will be people from other countries watching their films. They also know, presumably, that a poorly done accent can make a film virtually unwatchable. I would guess that that’s more the reason why non-Americans do better American accents than vice-versa: because, having suffered from hearing so many lame attempts at their own accents, they’re determined not to make the same mistake.
Sorry, just to clarify: “Frankly I doubt that they do” should read “Frankly I doubt that non-Americans try to perfect their American accents just to fool Americans”.
Michael Caine was actually praised by more than one reviewer for his phantom Texas accent in Secondhand Lions. 
Not only did he not sound Texan, I heard cockney slip through at least once. Not that he doesn’t normally do a seamless American accent, but only if it’s a generic one.
Mind if I barge in ? I may be drifting off the subject here but a couple of things occurred to me while I was reading thro’ this thread.
Are we talking about ‘actors’ or ‘stars’ ? I mean let’s be honest Costner only ever really seems to play Costner, just as Eastwood only ever played Eastwood. In the UK Connery and Caine are famous, and constantly parodied, for never ever EVER varying their accents no matter who they are playing (Connery as an Egyptian in Highlander ?).
Folk like Helena Bonham Carter, Kenneth Brannagh & Emma Thompson started in theatre. With no distracing special effects or authentic locations they had to make more effort to create the illusion. (and maybe their tendency to sound ‘affected’ comes from the need to ‘project’ from the stage) Put the ‘stars’ and ‘actors’ together in the same film and you really notice the difference.
Speaking as a Brit, both Gwyneth and Renée do pretty amazing accents but it’s a very specific accent (a certain class, from the South) which verges on sounding artificially perfect even when spoken by a native !
And seriously, what was the explanation for a person with the name of Jean-Luc Picard having such an English accent? I assume there was one, with the nerd scrutiny the show was put under.
Mind you, I know a Marco Gonzalez who has an English accent.
This was talked about in another thread recently. Someone said that early on, they would occasionally give him a French aside to mutter (“Sacre bleu!” “Merde!” “etc!”) but that eventually they gave up. They probably named the character long before they cast Stewart, and it’s a long-standing tradition in American TV and film to give foreigners from English accents regardless of their nationality.
In theater at least, given the choice between hearing a bad fake accent and someone’s natural, if inappropriate to the character, accent, I’d go with the natural one. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief a lot at a live performance, especially if the actors are locals or small-time rather than big stars. In a big-budget movie with highly paid professionals I’m more demanding, but if Connery can’t manage a convincing non-Scottish accent perhaps it’s best that he spare the world his attempts at other ones.
I think I remember hearing that Bond was a Scot in the novels, too. Any Bond fans know?
I’m neither a Brit nor a Buffy watcher, but I happened to see the Spike character once while visiting a friend who had the show on. My immediate reaction was, “Who’s the Billy Idol impersonator with the lousy fake accent?” I may have caught him in a bad scene, though.
Adding to the James Marsters question - What do Brits think of teh English accents of the American cast members of Lord of The Rings? Mortensen, Wood and Astin all sounded fine to me, and their accents didn’t seem to clash with their British costars, but how were they to native ears?
Scottish father, Swiss mother, in the books at least. Confirmed by Wikipedia (not that the latter is infallible, but it confirms what I already remembered).
I’m not sure who provided the voice talents, but there are some truly horrible mangled accents in the original Thunderbirds series, also in other Gerry Anderson stuff.
With that sort of film I don’t think it really matters - after all the members of the Fellowship were meant to represent the different ‘races’ weren’t they ? Even when the actors were Brits there was a wide geographical range- Gimli had a Scottish Accent, Baromir had Sean Bean trying to hide his quite frankly gorgeous Northern vowels, Samwise sounded like a yokel from the South West (contrasting nicely with Fodo’s more educated speech) & Gandalf was just theeeeeeatricaaaaal English.
From what I understand, this was intentional - Peter Jackson wanted the accents to fit the race and bakground. Thus, the Hobbits were rural, with accent dependant on education; Gondorans were more urban; Dwarves were Scottish; Elves were very, very upper-crust; Rangers were Northern-rural; and Wizards had J.R.R. Tolkien’s own Oxford accent. The question is, did it work?
I’d say yes. Everyone’s accent seemed to fit their character.
And as for Captain Picard’s accent, Trek fans have offered various explanations, but the writers and producers just kinda stick their fingers in their ears and shout “La La La! We can’t hear you!!!” whenever the subject is brought up.
Much like they do when someone asks about Klingons and those forehead ridges.
The simplest explanation is to just accept that Stewart isn’t a very versatile actor 
For me the “The Lord of the Rings”'s (where the hell do I fit an apostrophe in there ?) accents worked fine - except the hobbits now I come to think of it. I mean I understand the difference between Frodo and Sam but the others didn’t match either - I don’t remember if it was Pippin or Merry but one of them sounded distinctly Irish at times!
So what did people think of Puss-in-Boots’ Spanish accent in Shrek 2 ?
Billy Boyd who played Pippin is Glaswegian so that was pretty much his normal accent, perhaps just slightly altered or exaggerated. However, I don’t think he was unable to do accents since I saw so many interviews with those guys and I’m pretty certain I’ve heard them goofing around and doing American accents. Also, the accent didn’t seem as obvious in Master and Commander, so perhaps PJ just decided that Billy was so damn cute he’d let him talk anyway he wanted. I suppose it could be explained by the fact that the Tooks came from a different part of the Shire.
He did an interview with Michael Parkinson earlier this year, and actually said that at first he tried a French accent, like they were planning, but it just wasn’t working for the character, so they canned it. I don’t think that’s Patrick Stewart’s fault (though why they didn’t rename his character to Captain John Packard I don’t know).